


Wolfskin

by Guede



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Battle, Character Death, Coming of Age, Crisis of Faith, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Families of Choice, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Jealousy, M/M, Original Character(s), Pack Dynamics, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Revenge, Rough Sex, Sexual Tension, Time Skips, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:53:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 52,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21909265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Arthur's knights are bound together by more than mere circumstance.
Relationships: Arthur Castus/Guinevere/Lancelot, Arthur Castus/Lancelot, Galahad/Gawain/Tristan (King Arthur 2004)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 40





	1. Prologue: Steppes

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LJ in 2004. Characters aren't underage given the time period, though they would be considered so in a modern context.

Arthur was on the point of calling off the patrol and heading back to camp when he caught the scent, so faint it merely whispered against his instincts. He lifted his head into the light breeze, sniffing, while beneath him the saddle creaked and the horse uneasily nickered. Riding was a tricky thing when almost every horse was born knowing they should throw him off, but fortunately, there were ways and exceptions.

Rustling grass and a blast of steaming breath at Arthur’s elbow signaled Tristan’s horse. “Young. Frightened and bleeding.”

Nodding, Arthur twisted about and waved over Bedivere. “Go ahead with the rest. Tristan and I are going to check something, and then we’ll ride back to camp.”

Bedivere was a year Arthur’s senior in age and centuries in experience, but he only bent his commander a short, sharp look before whirling about and cantering off. Arthur turned and watched as the knight gathered the others and herded them back toward camp; some of the knights on this patrol were so young they still hadn’t learned to properly manage their too-long sword-scabbards. Occasionally, the group would slow so one red-faced boy could be swept off the ground, roughly shaken free of grass, and then deposited back in the saddle in a single motion. One of Bedivere’s favorite stunts, and one that stood him in good stead.

“It’ll take them a while at that rate.” Tristan’s horse skittered at a passing shadow, and he absently reined it in, one hand tangled in its mane and slowly combing through the coarse hair. His gaze took in the sere rockiness of the land, the bird passing overhead and the horses edging into the dark. Then he abruptly turned his horse about and set it at a brisk trot, leaving Arthur to scramble after.

From any other man, the action would have smacked of disrespect and Arthur would have had to do something about it, but with Tristan, it was only focusing on the business at hand. So Arthur didn’t mind the slight eccentricities.

He followed the other man as Tristan led them over the ridge and down into a clump of scraggly, sway-trunked trees whose bare branches seemed hung with the growing stench of angry fear. Once they were properly inside the grove, Arthur dismounted and took out a dagger in case the situation wasn’t right for words. Tristan did the same, and without consulting with each other, they fanned out to slowly sweep through the trees.

When they found him, Arthur almost had his head bashed in for his efforts.

Luckily, his peripheral vision noticed the flicker of black in the dark shadows and he was able to duck in time. The body hurtled past him, flipped over a root and crumpled into a filthy, bruised groan. Behind it, Tristan already had his sword out, its curve matching the fragment of silver crescent that garnished the sky.

“Don’t,” Arthur hissed. He’d almost lost his balance in his dodge sideways; his knee screamed, but it held and he pivoted around to face the new one.

A boy. For some reason, girls never seemed to suffer this fate. Or perhaps they did, but they were simply able to hide it better.

Black hair, wildly curling around sticks and dirt and dead leaves. Bloody feet and palms, and an assortment of cuts and bruises showing wherever rags didn’t hang loose on youth-raw boniness. One of the less promising first impressions…but the eyes were fierce as lightning over water. And watching Arthur, wary and pained and pleading for something that furiously tried to crack into him.

He got down on his hands and knees, then remembered his dagger and slowly put it aside. In response, Tristan was tensing up, ready to intervene, but the boy didn’t move. A bit encouraged, Arthur opened his mouth--and croaked. He’d learned some of the Sarmatian tongues as a boy, but forgotten them all when his father had died and then had to relearn them when he’d been sent to Uther’s birth-land. They were throat-grabbing languages of slippery roughness, and if he approached them too quickly, they were liable to turn snake-quick on him.

Arthur flushed, licked his lips and tried again. “Artorius Castus. I know what you are.”

The boy flinched, then set his shoulders and chin in a pose he probably thought was belligerent. It mostly accentuated his gauntness; he hadn’t eaten in a few days, at least.

“And I think you know what I am,” Arthur added. He spread out his hands on the ground, palms-up, and held them like that for a breath. Then he crawled forward and reached for the boy. “Where did they hurt you?”

“What would you know about that?” The voice had taken as much of a beating as the rest, but it wasn’t lacking at all in bravery. “You’re a Roman.”

And this was even harder than speaking Sarmatian. Arthur debated the merits for a few moments, but when he saw the determined disbelief in the boy’s eyes, he knew nothing short of real, true proof was going to be enough. Sighing, he closed his eyes. Rolled his shoulders. Tried to relax and to keep himself in check at the same time.

It didn’t work. Like every other time, he came back to himself weighting down a shivering, feverish body, with his teeth poised over a jugular pulse and his mind full of hate. Snarl wrenching his lips back, he yanked himself to the side and pretended to glare at the gnarled branches while his vision faded back in and his sanity restored itself.

“Oh. That’s how.”

It took several minutes of deep, controlled breathing before Arthur believed himself calm enough to face the source of that low, shocked exclamation, and even then, he had trouble keeping his eyes from drifting to the boy’s throat. Arthur forced himself to stare at a point a little above the eyelashes of the boy’s left eye. “Yes, I’m a Roman officer, but my father was a Sarmatian knight. I’m here to collect knights for service to the Empire.”

“And they’d take—”

“They don’t know. Or they’ve heard, but as far as I know, I’m the only officer that believes the stories, and that’s because I have to.” Arthur shrugged and went to retrieve his dagger. “Romans are generally very practical. We don’t believe anything we don’t see for ourselves.”

Tristan was growing restless, though he didn’t betray himself by any movements. Only a slight shift in scent. According to the low angle of the moon, it was late, and they’d have to hurry back if they didn’t want to be questioned by a guard fresh from the bedsheets and cranky as an old nanny goat. Arthur preferred to bring in conscripts like the one in front of him under cover of darkness, just in case something happened. Tiredness and poor light were excuses that served for almost all situations.

A sliver of intelligence peeked out from behind the caution in the boy’s face. “So it’s either be hunted down by my own tribe, or go with you and be slave to the Empire?”

“Fifteen years. It’s not forever. And you will be treated well. When you’re discharged, you can go wherever you like. There are lands that have never even heard a whisper about what we are.” If Arthur had to fight for every inch of that himself, he’d make it so. He’d never realized what a man’s mind could be capable of until he’d come to Rome, and he’d never realized what a man’s unreasoning hate could be capable of until he’d been sent to his first post. His mother had always made sure he’d been treated as equal to anyone, though not quite in the same way, and it’d been a bone-deep shock to find that the native Sarmatians could love fierce and tight in one moment, then howl for the blood of their brother or son in the next. When they found out, and it seemed they always found out, sooner or later.

Rocking back on his heels, the boy considered the matter. He picked at his nails, which were ragged down to the quick and scabbed over with thick crusts of dried blood. “Not much of a choice, is it? Them or you?”

Arthur could almost feel the wind change as the point turned in his favor. Instead of answering, he undid his cloak and held it out.

For a long second, they watched each other, and Arthur suddenly had the feeling that he didn’t entirely have the upper hand. It was the sensation of slipping a little, fingers sliding on the thin edge.

“Lancelot.” Newly-named, the boy painfully hauled himself across the separating space and bundled himself into Arthur’s cloak. His neck, beaten rough tan by sun and wind, had a sickly undertone of white, and when his cheek brushed against Arthur’s hand, it felt like the searing air just above a fire.

Arthur had been waiting for the eventual collapse, and so it was easy to catch Lancelot. Even easier to carry him back to the horses, for he weighed so little he seemed to float in Arthur’s arms. He was rank with the inevitable result of several days living like a dying animal, and the smell seemed to clot in Arthur’s nose as they rode back to camp.

“Halt! Who goes—” called the sentry.

“Artorius Castus.” A second for the recognition to sink in, and then Arthur nudged his horse onwards. They were used to him bringing in half-starved youths in the middle of the night, and in fact, if he didn’t show up with one, they teased him for days. The price of success, the camp commandant would grunt. That was one who wasn’t so dulled by the distance from Rome that he could manage the effort to wonder about Arthur’s methods, but the numbers of the conscripts kept increasing, and in the end, that was all that mattered to the high command.

Tristan slipped up beside Arthur as they headed toward their stables, turning a coolly assessing eye on Lancelot, who’d dozed off. “Not more than a week. He won’t know anything about it.”

“He seems to learn very fast.” Arthur shifted his burden so Lancelot’s breath wouldn’t land on his ear. He looked down at the sleeping face. “Not too young, after all. Only a little more so than you.”

“They threw me out sooner. Where I come from is far from where you found me.” But Tristan spoke as he would any truth, and didn’t lace his voice with any contempt. That was one of the reasons Arthur preferred to have him along whenever they went after an outcast. “I’ll go wake the surgeon. His ankle is twisted.”

With that, the other man turned his horse away and vanished into the shadowy lines of buildings. Arthur slowed his own mount, marveling as always at Tristan’s abilities, but when Lancelot stirred, moaning a little, Arthur picked up his pace and hurried to the stables.

* * *

When Lancelot woke again, it was to find some bastard Roman wrenching agony out of his ankle while that odd quiet-voiced knight and another one held him down. “What—don’t-- _ow_ \--you sons of whores—”

“Well, his mouth isn’t broken,” muttered the second knight, who had long wild brown hair and hands that could have crushed rocks. At least, that was what it felt like they were doing to Lancelot’s shoulder.

“Stay still,” said the first one to Lancelot. He followed up the command with a low, low growl which reverberations seemed to shake Lancelot’s bones in their flesh casings.

Suddenly, almost hysterically terrified, Lancelot instantly flicked his eyes to the Roman, but to his immense shock, that man didn’t seem to have noticed anything. He glanced back at the knights, who gave him looks that promised a beating if he didn’t settle.

Having no other choice, Lancelot gritted his teeth and tried not to cry so hard that it was really noticeable. But it was hard, whimpers beating against the backs of his teeth, pain shooting straight up his spine as the Roman went from leg to ribs, and in the end, he more or less passed out from the strain of the conflicting impulses. Not that his vision blacked out, or that he fainted, but for all intents and purposes he might as well have. Nothing he saw or felt or heard registered from the time the Roman threaded a needle through his flesh to the time that he vaguely heard the three men leaving.

After a while, Lancelot managed to roll over and sit up, which was when he discovered that he’d been roughly washed as well and moved from table to the most comfortable bed he’d ever been on by far. There was a hunk of dried-out bread and a water pitcher on a nearby table. Hunger unexpectedly whiplashed to life and he frantically scrabbled for it, cramming chunks of bread into his mouth and drinking straight from the pitcher.

“Don’t do that so quickly. You’ll only get sicker.” Art—Artorius stood in the doorway, halfway through stripping off his armor.

“Where have you been?” Lancelot countered. He slowed a little, but his stomach whined so much that he still made a mess.

Hands seized his wrists and made him eat at a tortuous crawl. “I had to report to the commandant.”

“Oh. Oh…this is your room?” With slightly better appreciation and a much fuller belly, Lancelot took a good look around. His fingers slipped on the pitcher handle, and only Arthur’s fast reflexes kept it from shattering.

Face unnaturally blank, Arthur set it down, then wiped off Lancelot’s mouth with the back of his hand and force-marched Lancelot over to the bed. Then he resumed undressing. “Yes. You would’ve been put with the other knights, but the transport ships are late and so we’re overflowing with soldiers ready to be sent out.”

“Generous of you.” Lancelot gingerly laid back, trying not to strain anything too badly. He sighed as his cheek touched the soft furs and woolens.

Arthur tossed him a look that was pleased, guilty and wary all at once. A most tangled man, though he seemed decisive enough. “You can have the bed,” he said, mouth twisted up with irony. “Though I’ll have to smoke the fleas out tomorrow, I think.”

As sorry as Lancelot was feeling right now, the attempt at laying guilt on him rolled right off the overwhelming sense of warm safe softness. In any case, his attitude had always been that if someone was willing to offer a sacrifice in his favor, it’d be rude not to accept. “You Romans have worse parasites. Like greed.”

Silence lurched between them, and for a second, Lancelot thought he’d gone too far. But then Arthur chuckled—tired, stressed, but definitely amused—and it was fine.

The last thing Lancelot remembered was the rustle of Arthur’s clothes as he settled into a chair, and the whisper of a strong breeze outside.


	2. Sarmatia

The sun was shining directly into Lancelot’s eyes, but he couldn’t shift away because Arthur was sleeping like a huge log right where he needed to go. At seventeen, Lancelot had gained a respectable height, but he was still as skinny as his sword. Arthur, on the other hand, was tall and well-muscled without being a lumbering bear like Bors—though that wasn’t to say that Arthur couldn’t seem a hulking menace when he wanted to.

Fortunately, after five years in Sarmatia, the other Roman officers had learned to leave Arthur alone and not to question his methods, which were much more successful than the norm. So there was little call for that sort of intimidation. It helped that Arthur had managed to keep back a squadron of knights from being shipped off, claiming he needed their help to find his way around the land. A bit of a lie now, because he knew Sarmatia as well as any of _his_ knights, but Lancelot wasn’t about to argue. Not when he didn’t have to leave for some foreign land, and Arthur’s fellow officers watched him and the other knights as if they suspected that any moment, Arthur would turn his men onto them like dogs at deer.

Of course, Arthur wouldn’t, but Lancelot rather liked the thought that it was a possibility.

“You’re making the grass rustle. Can’t you ever lie still?” Arthur’s face remained still—all but his lips, which had sneaked into a smile.

In response, Lancelot shoved an elbow into Arthur’s side and made the other man sit up with a gasp. As soon as the space was clear, Lancelot flopped into it and gave fervent thanks for the shade of Arthur’s shadow. His eyes had been beginning to burn, both from the sun and from the strong, icy breeze. “If I wanted to.”

“We get a half-day, and you don’t want to?” Arthur was patently disbelieving.

“Well, it’s hard to do that when you’re thinking so loudly. Worse than Bors’ snoring.” Lancelot rolled onto his belly and pillowed his chin on his arms. “Do you ever stop worrying?”

Typical Arthur sigh, matched perfectly to furrowed brow. For such a good soldier, Arthur was very bad at a fighting man’s essential ability to live in the present. Lancelot supposed that the foresight that spawned so much brooding came with being a good general, and Arthur was that; in the beginning, the ranking Roman officer of the camp had tried a few obvious attempts at getting rid of his annoyingly upright subordinate, sending a poorly-equipped and supported Arthur against the occasional rebellion, but it hadn’t worked.

Curious, that. Somehow, Arthur had gotten Sarmatians to follow him against their fellow countrymen. More than once.

“I’ll stop when the world is perfect and there’s nothing to worry about,” Arthur replied. He wasn’t entirely joking.

All right, if Lancelot really thought about it, he could understand how Arthur did what he did. Most of the Sarmatian tribes had bad blood between them, and it wasn’t that difficult to set them against each other. If the Romans didn’t slip up and badly annoy them once in a while, the tribes probably never would unite at all. And to be perfectly honest, Lancelot thought he could fight another Sarmatian if he absolutely had to. He loved his land and its traditions, but his body still remembered the way his people had treated him.

And then there was Arthur. If the rebels and raiders had won, then Arthur would have had to die, because the man would never surrender. He’d have died, and his knights would’ve gone to some block-headed Roman who still thought anything could be won with a simple mention of ‘Rome,’ and…

Lancelot disliked where his thoughts were going, so he cut them off at the root. So far, it hadn’t been a choice he’d had to make, and so he wasn’t going to worry about it until it was. If that ever happened. Arthur was very good at picking his men so he didn’t pit father against son or cousin against cousin.

That always amused Lancelot. His friend’s practicality and military sense, plus his slavery to duty, usually led him to be far more devious and backhanded than his cherished philosophies and religion said he should be. Which didn’t quite follow to the black fits to which Arthur was prone. Whatever his father had been, however well Arthur had come to know his father’s homeland…when it came down to it, Arthur was more Roman than most of the Romans Lancelot had met. So of course he was going to be good at warfare. Why he persisted in mourning the enemy, Lancelot couldn’t understand. It was hard enough just dealing with their own dead and their survivors. People did what they had to, and that was all life required of them.

“You’re smiling,” Arthur commented. “Making fun of me?”

He reached down and affectionately ran his fingers through Lancelot’s hair, grinning as if he wasn’t doing anything extraordinary.

Well, he wasn’t, but it still felt as if he’d set Lancelot’s nerves to shivering. To cover up his reaction, Lancelot batted away Arthur’s hand and smacked him in the shoulder. “All right, all right. Worry. But you could at least tell someone. Keep bottling it up and someday you’ll burst.”

“And I suppose you want me to tell you.” Undaunted, Arthur chucked Lancelot under the chin like he would a particularly mischievous boy.

Lancelot wanted to bite that hand. In what kind of mood, he wasn’t quite sure. So instead of doing that, he sulked just out of reach. “You see anyone else around?”

“I could take a walk. Dagonet’s just over the hill.” Still amused, though that faded with a gratifying speed once Arthur noticed how annoyed Lancelot was. He laid back down next to Lancelot and folded his arms under his head, pensiveness once again stretching over his face. “It’s Galahad. He’s not adjusting well.”

Youngest one, of course. Lancelot had no illusions as to the kind of tag-along he must have made those first few weeks, stumbling around and trying to learn control without giving everyone away, but he was certain he hadn’t been nearly as bad as that brat. He snorted into the grass poking up his nose. “Who didn’t go through that? I think he’s just trying to be difficult.”

“Lancelot.” Arthur’s voice was both an aural eye-roll and a plea for understanding.

“He thinks that his family will take him back, that it was all just a misunderstanding. Look, Arthur—we’ve all tried to talk to him. Gawain _keeps_ talking to him, even though it’s obviously useless. He won’t listen.” The wind stirred, raking invisible fingers along the ground so the grass parted in irregular grooves. It brought smells of dirt, smoke, leather. Sweat-spiced horseflesh from their hobbled mounts, who were quietly grazing a few yards away. Artorius Castus, which was a tingling mix of oiled metallic sharpness and musky earth.

Lancelot suddenly grew tired of lying around and pushed himself up into a sitting position. He vaguely registered Arthur’s startled jerk, but he was more preoccupied with the heat flushing through his mind. It began to leak into his cheeks, so he bunched his knees to his chest and used them to hide that. “He blames you, you know. Says you stole him away and forced him to join the Roman army.”

“I did, more or less.” Recrimination was a boon companion to the tiny anxiety-crinkles Arthur was already getting at the corners of his eyes. Only twenty-two, and already life was etching him away.

“Not _you_ alone,” Lancelot snapped, feeling unaccountably protective. And ridiculous, since Arthur didn’t need that. “Well, yes, you were the one to bring him in, but if you hadn’t, some centurion would’ve come along and done the same thing. I figured out that years ago.”

Arthur’s shoulders relaxed, but his eyebrows flew up. “So you don’t blame me?”

“You are unbelievably stupid sometimes.” It was Lancelot’s turn to do some eye-rolling, and he did so with great glee.

Mock-snarling, Arthur lunged for him, and they spent the next five minutes wrestling like morons, all laughing and knees slipping into soft spots and hair being pulled as if they were women. Eventually, Arthur managed to trap Lancelot’s arms behind his back, which put them chest to chest. When Lancelot discovered no amount of wriggling was going to get him free, he finally gave in to the urge and sank his teeth into the side of Arthur’s jaw. They’d known each other long enough to not expect a fair fight with each other.

He’d expected Arthur to curse and shove him away, then laugh. Ruffle his damned curls again.

Instead, Arthur froze. Then he let out his breath, a little bit at a time, as if he was trying to hold it but couldn’t. Lancelot’s cheeks began to warm up again, and this time, his gut joined them. He couldn’t stop staring at the blurry stubbled patch of skin in front of him.

“That hurts.” Arthur enunciated each word very carefully, as if he was afraid they would break once his lips let them go.

Lancelot nodded. The motion slid his mouth from the line of Arthur’s jaw down to the underside of Arthur’s chin. He decided to sniff, though for what reason he immediately forgot, and then his head seemed to be floating on waves of salt-spiced scent. His lips tentatively nipped, then repeated the gesture with a little more force when Arthur didn’t do anything.

“Ahem.”

It was a telling measure of how far gone they were in the strange mood that neither of them had even noticed the approaching horseman. Both of them sprang away at the same time and turned flustered faces to a clearly amused Gawain.

Arthur recovered first, but then, he had a lot of practice at making his face like stone. “What happened?”

“Nothing much. Galahad just annoyed a legionary, but he went for a ride later and was so angry he managed to knock himself off his horse. Bit of a bump, and he’s woozy, so we dropped him off at the surgeon’s. But the legionary’s centurion would like a word with you.” Gawain spoke in a light enough tone, but it was detectably strained.

And there went the nice half-day of rest. Of course Arthur immediately made for the horses, and there was nothing for it but for Lancelot to follow. If _someone_ didn’t take that brat in hand, Lancelot thought, he was going to do it himself. And at this point, he wasn’t feeling like being too careful. Galahad kept up his antics like he was and they were all going to be in the shit.

Arthur always was in a hurry when one of his knights was in trouble, which was both an endearing and irritating trait. While he was waving away the dust Arthur’s horse kicked up, Lancelot suspected he was leaning toward the latter feeling. “That half-grown jackass.”

“Don’t call Galahad that.” The sharpness of Gawain’s tone was a little unexpected, given his general good nature. In fact, it seemed to surprise even him, and when he went on, it was in a decidedly confused voice. “Anyway, he seems to have saved you from making a fool of yourself. Courting?”

“Shut up.” On the other hand, Arthur had a point about rushing away. Lancelot dug his heels into his horse’s sides and went to catch up with the other man with Gawain’s knowing laugh burning into his back.

* * *

Galahad restlessly tugged at the bandage he’d had wrapped about his head. It was itchy and too tight and sat too low on his forehead so whenever he needed to blink, he practically had to drag his eyelids down with his fingers. And it didn’t help that Tristan, sitting in the corner, never seemed to blink. “Would you stop watching me?”

“I’m facing away from you.”

“Are not.” He actually was, but Galahad couldn’t tell that from the feel of things. It was like a thousand sleepy eyes were crawling all over his body. “Look, he said I’d be fine. So go away.”

“He also said it would be good to keep an eye on you for a few days.” Tristan produced a knife and whetstone from somewhere and proceeded to sharpen his blade with long teeth-clenching scrapes. Which settled it: he was deliberately trying to annoy Galahad.

Well, Galahad wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Tristan could just sit there, calm as a lake on a windless day, and play with his stupid knives, and—

“He’s still here? I thought you said he was fine.”

Wonderful. They’d sent for Arthur. Galahad had to clamp his hands around the edge of the bed-frame in order to keep from…he didn’t know. Bolting out the window. Getting up and punching Arthur, and then doing something that would definitely get him killed by the other knights. Curling up in the bed and crying because his mother had had long soft hair and he was starting to forget its color.

“He is fine. But—” Whiny surgeon.

Gawain’s mutter. “We thought you’d want a word with him.”

A flicker of browns and blacks caught Galahad’s eye: Tristan, soundlessly putting away knife and whetstone and slipping out as Arthur walked in, Lancelot sidling at his heels like always. Gawain’s concerned face briefly popped in as well, but Tristan caught his shoulder and escorted him away. Then came back and did the same thing to a frustrated-looking Lancelot.

That feeling Galahad could understand, though he couldn’t the apparent reason behind it. Arthur was half-Sarmatian, yet he still managed to go in and wreck the families of his own people. And the sympathy in his eyes rubbed Galahad raw every time it showed up. What did he know? For that matter, what did he care about? Rome. Only Rome. If he would have just let Galahad go after Galahad had healed—but no, the empire needed cavalry, even if the cavalry didn’t give a shit about the empire.

The chair creaked as Arthur sat in it. Galahad hoped it would break.

“I had a talk with the centurion of that legionary—”

“It was not my fault,” Galahad broke in. “And you saw that soldier, didn’t you? He was twice my size.”

Arthur stopped and patiently waited for Galahad to go on, as if he were expecting the defensive torrent. It was grating. Like getting skin sliced off with a stone knife.

“And…and I hate this. Those Romans barely fill a third of the camp, and yet they lord it over everyone. Oh, I’m sorry—that includes you, doesn’t it?” The pent-up anger had hold of Galahad’s tongue now, and the more he spoke, the harder it pulled at him. “It’s not fair! It’s not! Why do I have to go and fight for some city that I’m never even going to see, whose people probably don’t even know where Sarmatia is? Why? Why me?”

Arthur clasped his hands together and stared at them, then lifted his head and solemnly looked at Galahad. “This isn’t some kind of personal grudge-match. You weren’t singled out by anyone. Rome’s decrees are binding on everyone, though if you would give us a chance, I don’t think you’d find us as bad as you seem to think.”

“Stop lying to me. I’m not starving and half-dead anymore; I can tell when you are. You don’t fool me.” Galahad crossed his arms over his chest because it was starting to feel as if it’d crack with the next breath. His next words straggled out in a whisper. “I just wanted to see them again.”

“You aren’t allowed to leave camp by yourself,” Arthur said, sounding as if he was struggling not to argue. Grooves appeared around his mouth and eyes, and he suddenly looked much older than he was. “Galahad…I know how difficult it is. I lost both my parents when I was ten. But there’s a reason I don’t let knights go back to their villages.”

Snorting, Galahad moved closer to the wall. His head was beginning to ache abominably now, with the pain centering around his right temple. “You’re afraid we’ll desert.”

“No!” The word spat from Arthur’s mouth with all the force of an artillery bolt. He rose a little from his chair, clenched fists first, but caught himself and sat back. “No,” he repeated, a little more calmly. “I’m afraid your family will kill you—no, hear me out. Once I had a knight…like us…who heard about his father falling ill and wanted to go visit him. The knight wasn’t due to leave for another month, so I went and escorted him out.”

Arthur swallowed and closed his eyes, like his head had just throbbed with the same excruciating stab that had shot through Galahad’s. “We got away, but I had to kill half the village to do it and the knight ended up dying of his wounds a week later. And then a cohort went out and slaughtered whatever villagers were left for rebellion.”

“Well, his village couldn’t have been like mine.” Galahad saw the plain incredulity in Arthur’s eyes and bit down on his lip. As furious as he felt, he could see that taking it out on Arthur wasn’t going to further his cause.

Especially since this was the only time he’d seen Arthur shaky and without something to distract him. His gut told him that this was a chance he needed to run with, and soon. “Arthur, please. I saw some faces that didn’t agree with what they were doing. I know I did. I know if I can just go back and show that I’m still alive, that I’m well—”

Outside, someone kicked the wall, and Arthur jerked out of his mood. His shoulders set and his lips thinned, though his eyes remained deceptively soft. “Galahad, no. I can’t.”

“Then get out. Get out!” Galahad started to throw the blanket at Arthur, then remembered that the other man was, after all, his superior officer. And as a fucking non-Roman, he could be flogged.

A tiny particle of rationality mentioned that Arthur had never, ever done that to any man, that in fact Arthur had never been anything but unfailingly kind and polite, but a much larger part was screaming that Arthur was keeping Galahad from at least saying farewell to his family. And that part was currently ruling.

For a moment, it seemed as if Arthur was going to stay for yet more arguing, but then his back slumped into a tired curve and he got up. His hand twitched, almost reaching out, but it fell back to his hip as he turned and left. As he passed through the door, a dark shadow swiveled out of a corner and fell into step slightly behind and to the step. Whatever Lancelot thought he was going to get from Arthur, he was going to be sorely disappointed.

So was Galahad, because a moment later Tristan stepped back in, followed by Gawain. “Come on. We’re going to miss dinner,” Gawain said. 

He tried to take Galahad by the arm, but Galahad shook him off and got up by himself. The hurt on the other man’s face sparked a bit of regret, but that was quickly swallowed up by the surge of bile in the back of Galahad’s throat. Field rations. As if that was anything to look forward to. And then later, everyone was going to be running around like idiots, getting ready to send off another regiment of knights to go die on alien soil.

Galahad stopped on that and chewed the thought while he allowed Gawain to lead him away. Everyone would be busy. With the regiment that was leaving.

* * *

Arthur stayed kneeling for another five minutes, but when he was no more peaceful than when he had begun, he had to give up. Soon he had to go his evening rounds, and he hadn’t yet gotten his dinner.

“You haven’t eaten. They were asking about that.” Like Arthur’s thoughts made flesh, Lancelot swung into the room, laden down with enough food that some of it almost certainly had to have been snitched. He tossed a hunk of bread to Arthur and set the rest down on a table, then produced a sizable flagon of wine from beneath his cloak. “Aren’t beginning to think you’re too good to eat with the rankers, are you?”

Good-humored tone, but in Arthur’s current mood, the words themselves bit like wet leather whiplashing over his flesh. He flinched, tried to hide it, and noticed too late that Lancelot had been watching.

“I was making a joke,” the other man muttered, voice tighter than it’d been before. He almost broke the flagon with the force with which he slammed it down.

Arthur caught himself in mid-sigh and swallowed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “It wasn’t you. I’m sorry.”

“You apologize far too much. I keep thinking that someday, you’re going to get tired of that and explode like Greek fire in a woodpile.” Lancelot made a point of sprawling out in his chair. Sometimes he seemed more smug cat than anything else, and Arthur wanted dearly to smack some discretion into him…except then he had a tendency to do something so brave and loyal that Arthur felt his heart shrivel in on itself with fear. He didn’t deserve that much devotion. He couldn’t be trusted with that much.

A knife handle tapping the table edge brought Arthur back to the present; Lancelot now looked resigned instead of frustrated. “Arthur. I’m looking forward to the day you lose your temper. You’d be healthier if you weren’t so damned calm all the time.”

“I seem to be healthy enough as it is.” To prove his point, Arthur picked up the wine and a nearby water pitcher, poured himself a well-watered cup and drained it in one swallow. He tried not to gasp too much afterward. Raised his eyebrow in challenge.

Face blank, Lancelot calmly reached across and took Arthur’s cup. He filled both it and his own, then downed them one after another without pausing for breath. Afterwards, he returned Arthur’s and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Well?”

“I feel like I’m fifteen again.” Arthur pressed down on his twitching lips, but in the end he couldn’t hold in the laugh.

“See? You look much better when you’re not frowning.” Snickering, Lancelot sat up straight and started dividing up the food into two rather unequal portions. He casually took the larger share for himself, and when Arthur bent a sharp look on him, he merely shrugged. “I’m your knight, not your servant. It’s not every day I bring you dinner.”

Well, as skinny as he was, he probably needed it more. Arthur let it go and began eating. “Thank you for that, by the way.”

“You’d better be welcome.” As always, Lancelot’s tone was just shy of insubordination. Some day he was going to run foul of an officer, and Arthur wasn’t going to be able to do anything to mitigate the result.

They ate in silence for several minutes while Lancelot’s feet tapped progressively louder against the floor. Consequently, Arthur felt around with his boots until he found the offending appendages, then trapped them under his own.

Lancelot grunted a little, more in surprise than pain. His eyes briefly flashed irritation, but quickly dropped back to his food.

Then he started rapping his knuckles against the table.

Arthur gritted his teeth and reminded himself that Lancelot was only seventeen and when Arthur had been seventeen, he’d been a pest to the other officers. “Yes?”

“You’re crushing my toes.” That was the same innocent look Lancelot most likely had used to cover his thievery of the mess storerooms.

“Lancelot.” When Arthur reached for the next bit of food, his fingers touched nothing. Startled, he looked down and discovered that he’d somehow managed to gobble everything. Like a soldier in the field, he supposed, but he wasn’t currently in that situation and he didn’t normally eat at that speed. True, he wanted to try to talk to Galahad again, but he didn’t need to give himself a stomach cramp while he was at it.

A finger intruded into his line of vision, but as soon as he focused on it, it flicked his nose. Lancelot grinned. “Paying attention now?”

Arthur rolled his eyes and began to get up. “Thanks for the meal. I need to go—”

He was interrupted by a hand whipping out and latching onto his wrist. “You spent not more than five minutes eating,” Lancelot said, all seriousness now. “Even the newest ones get longer than that. Arthur, would you just stop for a minute? Why do you keep running away?”

“I’m not running,” Arthur snapped, futilely pulling at his arm. “I’m going to see to my duties.”

“Well, one excuse is much like another.” Lancelot yanked back and nearly sent Arthur falling over him. “You’ve been avoiding me since this morning, and I don’t think it’s only to do with Galahad’s little temper tantrums.”

It always seemed like Lancelot knew just what to say when he shouldn’t have said it. Charming habit, really.

With a last glance at the door, Arthur gave up on starting his evening responsibilities early; if he was honest with himself, and he generally tried to be, he valued Lancelot’s friendship above all his other ones. They’d come a long way since the morning he’d woken up in his chair with a badly cramped neck and a spindly waif of a boy sleep-drooling over his blankets, and for the life of him, he still couldn’t remember how. But he knew its worth well enough. “I’m not avoiding you.”

“You are. Worse yet, you’re making up the free time with that God of yours.” Lancelot jerked his chin at the cross on the wall. “I bet he must be thrilled, having you on your knees at the slightest wind of—”

Arthur waited, but the other man didn’t finish the sentence. It didn’t actually matter, for he could see the direction of its end. “You’re jealous of my religion? Lancelot, honestly, I don’t think—”

“No, you don’t think.” Lancelot was muttering under his breath, accent roughening the Latin until it was sharp enough to sliver Arthur’s hearing. He was staring at Arthur’s hand, which he still held. His thumb moved, rolled its pad over the palm’s shallow hollow and then traced back to run along one faint vein-shadow.

The gesture stirred both warning and something else in Arthur; it took a long, breathless moment for him to figure out what the second emotion was, but when he did, he wanted to sink into the earth. “You’re only seventeen.”

“I killed my first man at fourteen, had my first woman at fifteen. You should know. You were there for both.” And now Lancelot looked up, eyes wide with a shy plea. He was gradually pulling Arthur to him, as slow and as inevitable as the tides. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve woken up in your bed.”

“Because you were always too drunk to make it to your own.” Arthur tried to laugh, but the sound came out strangled and thick. He pulled again, hard and fast, but Lancelot stood even faster and so all that happened was that they ended up standing with their breath in each other’s face. The air hissed between Arthur’s teeth, which he clenched together so they wouldn’t wander. If he had been able, he would have glued them that way. “Lancelot…if you have any sense, you won’t make me turn you down.”

Of course, that damnable pup just took another step forward so his clothes rustled heat into Arthur’s and his lips brushed Arthur’s ear with every word. Their arms were twisted up between them—a poor barrier, and a mockery of the warrior’s hand-clasp. “Is it your Christianity? Is this numbered among those many, many do-not’s it lists in exchange for your soul?”

And Arthur closed his eyes, trying to ignore the stretch of neck that was his, if he only turned his head just a little. “No. If you’ve listened at all, you know I regularly break at least three commandments.”

“Murdering, adultery…” Lancelot trailed off with an interrogative uplift.

“Thievery,” Arthur added. “I take boys from their families. I persuade them to go.”

“‘Render unto Caesar’. It seems to be a convenient quote for the other Christians here.” Pressed up against Arthur’s breast, Lancelot’s fingers uncurled. They crept up to Arthur’s shoulder and settled there, five long weights of fire. The bared length of throat shifted nearer, so much so that Arthur’s nose was filled with hot sweet burning scent. “I know you, Arthur. You wouldn’t do something that you truly disagreed with. And somewhere in there, you think sending Sarmatian boys away is more good than bad. It’s a duty you owe the Empire.”

White spots were dancing in the blackness, alerting Arthur to the fact that he was squeezing his eyes shut with entirely too much force. “Do I?”

“And I desperately wish you didn’t think so, but then you wouldn’t be you if not for your _duty_. But that’s an entirely different argument, and one I fully intend to win. Later.” Lancelot’s smile grazed Arthur’s cheek, searing the curve into it. “Stop second-guessing yourself.”

“If I didn’t do that, I would also not be myself.” With a last effort, Arthur got himself under control and pushed himself back, holding Lancelot away by the shoulders. He saw the hurt and the uncomprehending anger boiling up in his friend, and he tried to forestall it. “Lancelot, you’re a knight under me. And that’s all that I demand of you—be my knight and fight by my side. Whatever else you think you owe me—”

The shoulders brutally twisted out of Arthur’s grip, while Lancelot’s face seemed to undergo a similar process. He flung himself away, then halted and began to turn back. “You—it’s not about owing, Arthur! Do you honestly think I’d—I’d—sometimes I honestly think I could kill you. Not everything comes back to duty, you know.”

Arthur opened his mouth, hoping that the right words would come. They didn’t, and Lancelot went on, arms cutting the air to ribbons with their short slices.

“Look, I hate that I have to fight for fucking Rome. I hate that I have to leave someday and probably die on someone else’s soil, and I hate that no matter what happens, I’ll never see my family again. But believe it or not, Arthur, I don’t blame you for that. None of us do. You do what you can around what you have to.” As Lancelot finished, he let his arms fall to his sides and looked up at Arthur, face completely drained. For a moment, space and time wavered, and Arthur was again watching the young boy who he’d just brought in, weak in everything but the spirit bound up in those dark eyes.

He wanted so badly to believe in what Lancelot said, but five years in Sarmatia learning the ways of how an empire sustained itself in practice were too much for him to immediately dismiss. It was a flawed system—beautiful and capable of producing incredible accomplishments—and it depended on fallible men. This far from Rome’s influence, Romans turned ugly and crooked, running rampant without anything to keep them in check. And if the one thing Arthur feared most in the world was losing the control he’d so painfully learned. One misstep, and it’d be more than his life in danger.

“We can’t—” he started.

“Why not—”

“—Lancelot!” Arthur seized the other man and had him up against the wall before he knew what he was doing. When that realization shocked through him, he nearly dropped the other man. Except Lancelot yanked him back and, the fool, kissed him as hard as possible.

The next few seconds were as long as a year of sorrows and as short as the life of a spark. There were teeth in Arthur’s lip and then metallic wetness etching the inside of his mouth. There was fury nestling beneath his tongue, and muscles bunching beneath his hands, daring him to tighten his hold until they gave and he did that. He was being eaten from inside out, and so he returned the favor.

Somewhere in the distance, a fist hit wood.

Arthur shoved himself up against the limp body, swallowed every gasp and moan. Then he chewed his way down to soft, vulnerable skin. Let the pulse-fade-pulse of life flutter against his teeth, and when its rate sped up, he bit down. Not quite breaking the skin, but he could if he wanted to—

“Arthur. Arthur!” More knocking. “Arthur! It’s Galahad!”

Gal—knights. Camp. His room.

The world seemed to swirl out of nowhere, but when it fully opened, it did so with a bang that rattled Arthur’s bones. He blinked. Then had to watch the image of a white-faced, bloody-mouthed Lancelot swim into view. Little red marks trailed from the torn lip across one cheek to end in an already-darkening bruise on the side of Lancelot’s neck.

“If you say you regretted that,” Lancelot suddenly said, voice thin but firm, “I’ll kill you. I swear.”

“ _You’ll_ regret it. Wait a few years…” Arthur stepped back, wiping at his mouth and trying desperately not to lick at the blood on his fingers. He came very close to gagging onto the foul mixture of self-disgust and longing that rose in the back of his throat, cloying and acidic. “You have no idea what you’re trying to do.”

The door nearly broke from its hinges under a fresh assault. “Arthur!”

Damn it. _Damn_ it.

“You liked that. You wanted that,” Lancelot hissed. His hand flew to the bite mark on his neck, touching it gingerly. Almost reverently. “Arthur—”

“Arthur! Are you in there?” Gawain.

One thing at a time, Arthur told himself. “We’ll talk later. But till then—don’t,” he said to Lancelot. Then he whipped around, jerked up the locks and yanked open the door. “What happened?”

* * *

Gawain was never going to forgive himself. For that matter, Tristan wasn’t very happy with himself, either. He could track a trail a week old over the roughest terrain, yet he couldn’t keep an eye on one utterly stupid fifteen-year-old.

Arthur came into the stables, checked himself at seeing his horse already wearing its tack, then mounted and trotted to the head of the group. “All right, Gawain says he’s most familiar with the village, so he and Tristan will lead. Keep your swords sheathed until I tell you—no matter what the circumstances.”

Astride a big bay charger, Agravaine muttered his usual vaguely mutinous complaints. “Are we on our own again? Or have the legions decided to do their own dirty work?”

“I think we’d all rather the legions stay out of this,” Arthur replied, terse and glowering. “Unless you’d like to ignite a war. No? Thank you. Gawain, Tristan—”

Tristan obediently swung his horse out onto the path leading to the western camp gate, and a moment later, Gawain trotted up beside him. The other man’s face was set in a stolid mask, but his fingers plucked and tangled in his reins until his horse was fairly dancing with confusion. As soon as they’d exited the camp, Gawain kicked his horse into a gallop, and in the space of a heartbeat he’d nearly lost them in the blanketing dark.

Curses from the other knights flung after Tristan as he hurried up to Gawain and caught at the other horse’s bridle. “Slow down.”

“It’s been at least an hour since anyone saw him. The village isn’t that far; by the time we get there, they might have already killed him.” Gawain tore the leather out of Tristan’s hands, taking off a layer of skin in the process.

Tristan bit back the hiss of pain that lashed up his throat and quickly dug out a rag to wrap around his hand. He’d forgotten to put on his gauntlets in the rush after losing track of Galahad. “We’ll be in time, but that will do no good if we’re outnumbered.”

“And I bet half of them won’t even fight for Galahad,” Gawain mumbled, as if he hadn’t even heard Tristan. “Can’t blame them—that idiot. I told him to talk to me. I asked—I even begged him to, but he wouldn’t.”

High in the sky, the moon emanated a lifeless pale light that did little to aid sight. As they raced over the ground, Tristan searched what ground he could see as best he could, but it was difficult to make out anything that was more than a few feet away. Gawain was only visible as a ghostly patchwork of creaking shadowy leather and slightly lighter skin, and at the rate they were going, warning irregularities on the far-from-smooth ground seemed to leap up directly before the horses. If a hoof were to stumble, it would almost certainly result in a catastrophic fall.

“That stupid, stupid bastard. As if he was the only one that’s ever missed his family. I had brothers that were conscripted, wandering around the same camp and I had to hide every time they came by because they didn’t end up like me, come twelve.” The more he spoke, the more tightly the fury in Gawain’s voice wound about the worry. He kept forcing his horse faster and faster, and in order to keep up, Tristan had to push his own mount to the point where lather was coming off its sides onto his knees and wheezes squeezed out of its nostrils with every step. “What was he thinking? What? Didn’t he believe me when I told him—”

“He started late. The centurions didn’t take him on his twelfth birthday because he looked so small and young, and he probably was beginning to think he’d avoid service altogether.” It was awkward, but Tristan managed to get into one saddlebag with his left hand. His fingers grazed leather, and he whipped out the gauntlets. They were his old pair, and painfully tight, but they would do for a night. “You can’t believe if you don’t listen.”

Gawain’s glare was more of a scorching sense than something Tristan actually saw. “Why are you so reasonable?”

“Because if I’m not, you’re so upset you’ll get us lost.” A little bit of the exasperation and humiliation Tristan thought he’d had safely tucked within him slipped out. The pace staggered a moment as Gawain unwittingly signaled his surprise to his horse. Struggling to keep his head level, Tristan realized he was curling his nails into his injured hand only after hot blood soaked through his makeshift bandage. “It wasn’t your fault. I told you I’d watch him while you got dinner for us.”

“Oh, don’t even think of blaming yourself. Wasn’t like you could’ve turned down that order from the legate, and we all figured Galahad would sulk in the stables all night.” When Gawain chuckled, it was edged with high-pitched strain; his voice had more or less settled into its manhood timbre, but when he was under extreme duress, it tended to crack.

Tristan started to respond, then realized that he wasn’t quite sure if he could. The silence that was between them now was not the kind that was to be broken lightly, and while it weighed on him, he suspected that words would only add to the leadenness.

So they rode and rode, the rest eventually catching up, and Tristan ignored the muffled oaths and the thud-clank of leather and mail in favor of concentrating on the less-obvious noises: the difference between the rustle of untrodden and trodden grass, the faint smell of determined youth that had passed here, the slow-growing spot of brightness on the horizon. He was still furious with himself for failing to keep his word, but he’d learned long ago that preoccupation with anything but the trail only led to more losses. And for Gawain’s sake at least, he wouldn’t let that happen.

Personally, Tristan thought they could do without Galahad, who didn’t seem to bring anything special to the table and who didn’t seem inclined to even take the precautions upon which all their safety lay. He was only threatening the whole, and not offering anything in return.

Except Gawain had been the one to go out with Arthur the night they’d found Galahad, and Gawain had been the one to volunteer as a guide to the new one. He was kind like that—he’d been among the first to try and speak to Tristan, even though they were from distant tribes and the difference in their dialects jarred like clashing swords—and when his eyes rested on Galahad, they seemed to soften just a little. A rare thing in the harsh, torn life they lived.

“I’m sorry.” Low and heartfelt, and the surprise of it was about equal to a sharp blow to Tristan’s solar plexus. Gawain’s hand briefly ghosted over Tristan’s arm, and then they had to draw apart to keep the horses from accidentally tangling hooves in the dark. “I didn’t mean to take everything out on you.”

“I didn’t notice that you were.” And even if Tristan had, he doubted that he would have cared. Some things were worth paying for in a little hurt, and hearing Gawain’s thoughts was one of them, because for all the other’s seeming openness, he actually kept himself quite close. Until this night, Tristan had never known about Gawain’s brothers, and now he wondered if he ever would have.

A third horse surged up beside them, and Lancelot’s face gradually emerged from the blackness. “Arthur says when we get there, slow down and circle the village. Quietly. He wants to know what’s going on before we go in.”

“It’s only another few minutes.” Gawain lifted his arm and waved at the bright red glow loomed before them. Another few yards and they were in the circle of its lurid light, which highlighted all the worst parts of the dawning comprehension on Gawain’s face. “See…oh, no.”

“Fuck!” Lancelot reined in and fell back, undoubtedly to consult with Arthur.

In the precious few seconds he had before Gawain leaped into rage, Tristan reached over and seized the bridle of Gawain’s horse. It brought them dangerously near each other and made him lean too far out of the saddle, but he doggedly held on. “Don’t run in. It’ll only make his death more likely.”

“What would you know about it?” Gawain hissed, grabbing Tristan’s wrist and yanking, though Tristan’s grip didn’t slacken.

“I don’t smell burning flesh,” Tristan replied. He absently noticed that his voice had gone flat, but he was too busy fighting down the memories to pay much attention to that or to Gawain. Dropping the bridle revealed that he’d reopened his raw palm for the third time in the night, but there was no time to do anything except grit his teeth and hope the gauntlet would hold the bandage on. “You weren’t the only one with brothers. Except mine was like me. He didn’t make the walk up here.”

Gawain’s sharp intake of breath almost masked the sound of wild shouts coming from the village. The region’s typical collection of low round huts, with only flimsy fences as barriers; the Romans didn’t permit any substantial fortifications. Tristan reminded himself that objectively, it was going to be an easy fight.

Arthur charged up between them, his face painted in red stripes of cool, thinking fury. “Tristan, Gawain, stay here. The rest of us will go around back and ride in to disrupt…whatever they’re doing. I’m going to try to bargain first, but…if you hear any fighting, go in and get Galahad.”

He rapped out his orders in a single breath, then turned his horse about and led the rest off. Gawain sawed on the reins with uncharacteristic clumsiness to slow his horse down, a muscle in his jaw ticking off the seconds.

“If he were already dead, we’d smell a lot more excitement.” Tristan moved his hand up and down his horse’s neck, trying to soothe its nervous whickers.

“You’re terrible at reassuring people.” As soon as Gawain spoke, he winced and ducked his head. “But thanks. Damn it, why is it taking so long—”

A loud scream interrupted him, then went on to shatter itself against the glassy black sky. And then they were spurring their horses into the thick of a milling mass of open-mouthed, hate-eyed people, swords up. Tristan looked about for Galahad, but only saw a stunned-looking Lancelot pulling his sword out of a fresh body, moving as if he were in a nightmare. A man ran up behind him and raised an ax, but then Arthur plunged in and the axman fell beneath the gore-splattered hooves of Arthur’s horse.

“There!”

Turning about got Tristan a good look at Gawain’s back and at an oncoming makeshift spear, probably a relic of some ancestor but still deadly for all its age. He ducked under the point and drove his horse forward to force the other man back, then chopped with his sword as he rode by. The blow jarred on bone and stuck, but Tristan hung on to the hilt and a moment later, the body fell away. Blood splashed the underside of his chin.

“Galahad—no—give me your hand—your _hand_ \--” 

Some women charging Percival cut off Tristan’s view for a second, and when he could see Gawain again, the other knight had Galahad half-into the saddle before him. It looked as if Galahad was still fighting to get away.

Tristan swallowed a burst of anger whose fierceness momentarily shocked him and drew up alongside them. He gave Galahad a shove that made the other cry out with pain—Galahad was bloody and had at least a dislocated shoulder—but that got the fool into the saddle. In response, Galahad whipped about and snarled. “You bastards, let me down—”

Shriek that rattle Tristan’s spine. He belatedly recognized it as a disowning curse, but by then its originator had come up and slammed a sword into his horse’s face. Swearing, he immediately jumped off, as far as he could from the pain-maddened steed, and swung out his sword in a wide arc. A woman faced him, arms as thickly corded as any man’s, mouth wide with vitriol and blade slicing at Tristan.

He blocked, stepped sideways and spun to cut open her back. She stumbled forward and nearly went down.

Nearly, because Galahad had seized the reins of Gawain’s horse and shoved it between Tristan and the woman. “It’s my mother!”

“She’s—” Gawain yanked back the reins, but not before the woman’s sword had struck his arm. He swore, backed up his horse while Galahad sat frozen with disbelief before him, and thus gave Tristan enough room to step in and cross blades with her.

He had her disarmed in seconds, and was about to deliver the last blow when Galahad again screamed. Gawain gave a hoarse shout. For some reason, Tristan hesitated.

That was long enough for the woman to rise up and stab a hidden dagger into his thigh. Tristan crumpled to one knee, caught himself, and then threw himself aside to avoid another villager coming up. Silver flickered from his other side, and—

\--pounding hooves. Arthur’s gauntlet knotting itself around Tristan’s arm and pulling him up to safety, while from behind Agravaine swept in to take care of the woman and Lancelot to deal with the man.

“Enough!” Arthur yelled. His face was drained of all color, and the sickness was rolling off of him in waves. “Knights! Withdraw, now!”

“Now?” repeated Agravaine. “Shit. I just started repaying these sons of whores for their raids on my village.”

Arthur spun about and delivered a glare that rivaled lightning for crackling promised destruction. “ _Now_.”

His voice was so far away…Tristan realized what was happening, and dug fingers into his leg-wound, but everything insisted on drifting and he had to move with it.

“Tristan? Arthur, please, he’s—”

Gawain? Or Galahad?

Couldn’t tell. Too dark.

* * *

“You know Imperial policy, Artorius. I’ve let you flout it so far because your ways seemed to be working, but this last little incident…God have mercy, but it’s going to be a mess.” Lucius Cornelius was a fairly honest man, as the Roman officers went, but he didn’t deal well with crises. As Arthur generally caused the least number of them, they usually got along all right, but now that was looking as if it’d irrevocably changed.

“Human sacrifice is also outlawed under Imperial policy, sir.” Arthur kept his gaze lowered, though that forced him to stare at the blood caking his hands. It was a cold night, and the red stickiness had already congealed.

With a heavy sigh, Lucius sat down and plucked a paper from the stack on his desk. “Barbarians still. After all we’ve done…well, it’s still a bad situation. Hard enough to keep peace as it is; I’ve got chieftains constantly knocking down my door about their petty little grudges, as if I didn’t have enough to do.”

“Sir. With all due respect, Galahad was enlisted. By attacking him, the villagers were by extension attacking us—” The argument was foul and stinking on Arthur’s tongue, but in the end, the welfare of his knights meant the most to him. And he had given the villagers a chance at a peaceful resolution; they had been the ones to reject it and raise arms. That should have been enough to settle his doubts.

“A true Roman never would have found himself in that position!” snapped Lucius. Not a passionate man, he soon cooled to resignation. “In any case, it’s not a discussion point, Castus. You’ve been reposted.”

Arthur’s stomach plummeted. The objection crashed up his throat and was nearly out when Lucius went on. “And you’re to take your knights with you. All of them. I told you, soldiers are not supposed to serve in their homelands, and tonight just proved the wisdom of that. I’ve ordered the outgoing regiment delayed so you can leave with them tomorrow afternoon. To Britain. And that will be all.”

“Sir,” Arthur said, reflexes carrying him out of the room and back to his own.

Britain. God have mercy on them, indeed. They were going to Britain.

Arriving in his bedroom provided no relief from the new worries, and in fact awakened older ones. Lancelot was curled up on the bed, fever-bright eyes fixed on Arthur, who stopped and waited.

After a long silence, Lancelot closed his eyes and spoke. “Just this morning, I thought I could kill anyone for your sake.”

“I…” _wouldn’t ask you to do that_ , Arthur wanted to say, but that was a transparent lie. He slowly crossed the room to a water-stand and washed off the worst of the dried blood, then stripped himself of his armor. “Rome is…Rome was the only place that ever welcomed me. Men can and will do horrible things in her name, but they also work marvels. And I believe that in the end, serving her is the best way to make things better.”

“I _can_ kill anyone for you. I found that out tonight, and it frightens me.” Lancelot opened his eyes, his stare enough by itself to bring Arthur to the side of the bed. “For you. Not for your Rome or for your God—Arthur, you _have_ your beliefs, but you _aren’t_ them.”

Arthur swallowed. Unbidden, his hand went out to cup Lancelot’s cheek. “We’re going to Britain tomorrow. All of us.”

“Then let me stay tonight. I want one memory of this on my birth soil.” Fingers wrapped around Arthur’s hand, pulling it down, and damn his weakness, but this time he couldn’t not follow.

* * *

Gawain woke sometime in the very early morning when the sky was just graying, color of an aged hermit’s hair. In the corner, Galahad watched him, face tear-stained but oddly calm. “How’s…”

“He’ll be fine. Lost a lot of blood, but the wound itself wasn’t bad.” Tristan was warm against Gawain’s chest, but not too warm, which was good. No fever so far. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to…I didn’t mean…” Galahad’s stoic façade suddenly dissolved into fearful uncertainty. “I’m sorry.”

“You did mean to. You planned everything very well.” Although Tristan didn’t so much as twitch, his voice rolled out as if he’d been awake for hours. He better not have, or else Gawain was going to give in and let that cackling crazy of a surgeon drug him.

Galahad’s brows scrunched together, and he fiddled with his arm-slung. “I didn’t want for anyone to get hurt.”

“Then you should’ve listened to us.” It was too early, Gawain was too sore, and he was just a little irked at having all his efforts at helping thrown away like they’d never meant anything. He laid back down and buried his nose in Tristan’s hair.

Tristan sucked in a breath, then relaxed very slowly, as if he wasn’t sure what was going on. To be honest, neither did Gawain; it’d started with him being too tired after pinning down Tristan for the surgeon’s work to find his own cot, but now, he didn’t know where he was. He did know it was comfortable and suited him in a deeply satisfying way that he’d never come across before.

“I know, all right?” And Galahad’s temper was back, so it appeared he was fundamentally none the worse for the night. “But—how am I supposed to believe something like that, told to me by men I barely know? Look, until I happened, no one ever talked about those stories except to make fun of them. We’ve been near Romans for years. We’ve been _civilized_ , or so the braggarts say.”

“Because—” Tristan stopped, apparently reconsidering. “That isn’t a bad point.”

Gawain blinked in surprise, then glanced up at Galahad, who looked equally startled.

“You still should have known when they drove you out,” Tristan added.

“I’m sorry,” Galahad repeated, suddenly going quiet and broken and worn, like a blade honed so thin it was on the verge of snapping. “It’s only…one of my sisters was going to have a baby. She promised she’d name it after me. And—and my mother’s dead now.”

Nervous, Gawain sat up. “Are you going to blame Agravaine for that?”

“I want to.” The raw honesty in Galahad’s face made Gawain’s chest squeeze in on itself. “I do want to, badly. But he didn’t know…and she was aiming for me when she did that.” Galahad reached over and tapped the bandage around Gawain’s arm. “You blocked her.”

“Well, I think you deserve to live. Though sometimes it seems like a stupid idea.” Gawain snuggled back into the blankets, hoping to catch a few more seconds of sleep. After a few seconds of trying, it became glaringly obvious that sleep had run too far to be found, and Gawain was left to stew in his increasingly tangled thoughts. “And if you put us through that again, I will kill you myself. Damn it, Galahad, do you think any of us liked fighting your family?”

When Galahad answered, he was much, much closer than before. Practically lying over Gawain and Tristan, in fact. “No, I know you didn’t. I…um…do I thank you for that, or is it one of those…”

“Just…lie down, shut up and pay attention, all right?” Gawain shoved Galahad down in front of Tristan and determinedly resolved not to deal with anything until he’d gotten at least another hour of sleep. Nothing was ever concluded well when he was cranky.

Surprisingly enough, Galahad did as he was told. And for whatever reason, that was when sleep decided to find Gawain again. There was something odd about that, and he needed to think about it, but later. Right now, he wasn’t going to turn down the gift when given.


	3. Britain

Arthur’s return to Britain hadn’t been much different from his departure, save that this time, he had been taller and more observant. If he sat down and truly thought about it, however, he could draw enough fragments of childhood memory under the gaze of adulthood to realize that it was the same bloody, fractious land he had left. It still ate men at a prodigious rate, spitting out widows and orphans to wander through the moors and mists.

Sadly, the weather was in fact worse than he remembered.

“I knew I’d find you here.”

No need to turn and greet, because Arthur already knew what he would find: Lancelot, fully-grown and beautiful and hard in a way he’d never been in Sarmatia. Winters seemed to be harsh wherever they went, but here, the snow brought arrows in the night and dead bodies nearly at their doorsteps. Snow quieted feet of the already silent Woads, and the sight of soldiers huddling close to hearthfires undoubtedly emboldened them.

If Sarmatia had shown Arthur how men hated, then Britain had reminded him that he too wasn’t exempt from that emotion. This had been the land that had killed both his parents, that had driven the young, shivering boy-him to Rome and then to the other side of the empire. This was now the land that was killing his knights, slow but sure.

A hand came to rest on his shoulder, like the simple gesture of comradeship. Then it slid further, fingertips just stroking the small strip of skin between his collar and his hairline, nails curling down in a decidedly intimate manner. Arthur bit his lip and felt the blood start to freeze as soon as it welled out.

“You mourn the longest of any of us. Sometimes it seems as if you never do stop.”

“As always, you’re far more perceptive than you ever will realize.” Delivering the insult-wrapped compliment provoked a bit of playfulness out of hibernation, but their present surroundings soon recalled Arthur’s grim mood. Still, Lancelot was warm no matter what the temperature, and barring the constant possibility of Tristan ghosting by, no one else was near. “I don’t suppose you’ll ever cease to goad me?” Arthur teased, reaching up and grabbing Lancelot’s wrist.

He pulled the other man to him and pressed their cheeks together, then took a long whiff to steady himself. Lancelot’s breath caught, puff of heat burning through the icy air, and then the other man dropped his head to the side, silently encouraging. It wasn’t something Arthur could really afford to give in to, but at the moment, he was feeling too despondent to appreciate the need for further sacrifices. And Lancelot smelled like…leather and earthy horseflesh, honest steel and…if Arthur buried his nose into those soft curls, like Sarmatia.

“Odd. I miss your country.” Arthur tangled his other hand in Lancelot’s hair, lazily petting the other man. “It can’t be anything like what you’re suffering, but it hurts.”

“I was enjoying that.” Lancelot irritably nipped at Arthur’s ear, then apologetically licked the spot. His free hand was busily tucking itself into the side fastenings of Arthur’s cuirass. “You do realize that there’s a difference between suffering and pain? If I were half as relentless about being depressed as you are, we’d never get anything done. So be happy at least one of us knows how to get on with his life.”

A reluctant grin found itself to Arthur’s face. Nuzzling at Lancelot, he drew two knuckles down the curving slope of the other man’s spine and watched in a moment of pure amused pleasure as Lancelot arched and whimpered. Through layers of leather and wool, no less. Of all Lancelot’s weak points, it was one of Arthur’s favorites. “Forgive me for trying to make you out to be like most good men, then.”

“You should know by now that I’m not like other men,” Lancelot loftily pronounced, though he crumpled against Arthur quickly enough when teeth were applied to neck. His knee insistently pushed at Arthur’s, trying to wedge in. “Some pure fellow you turned out to be. Right in the graveyard.”

And it only took two little words to sling Arthur right back into dark reality of the true world. He stiffened, felt Lancelot do the same, and then dug as deep as he could for the right words to smooth matter over, even though he already knew he wouldn’t find them.

“Bors was right. I should keep my mouth shut more often.” Lancelot sounded reflective. Deceptively calm. And his face was a perfect match to his tone as he stepped back and pulled free of Arthur. He struck up a fast pace toward the graveyard’s exit, not even slowing when he threw an explanation over his shoulder. “By the way, whenever you’re done praying over Bedivere, some new orders came in. They’re waiting on your desk.”

Notably, it wasn’t an explanation of the most pressing question that hung in the air. Arthur caught himself cursing, hurriedly turned it into a quick blessing on the fresh grave beside him, and then rushed after the other man. “It wasn’t because of you.”

“It’s never because of me—no, that’s not right.” Lancelot kept his eyes on his fast-moving feet, and his hands clenched to his sides. “It’s always something that I can’t do anything about. That begins to grate after a while, Arthur. Seven years after that first time you put me to bed…you know, that night I thought you were some kind of god, come down to rescue me.”

“Well, I’m sorry if it disappoints that I’m only a man. That I weep and grieve and fail.” The shift from sadness to hot anger took Arthur by surprise, and in that moment of unsteadiness, he managed to get hold of himself before he followed instincts and slammed Lancelot into the ground. Another difference between Britain and Sarmatia, hellish though they both were in their own ways: the very air seemed to feed the darker facets of Arthur’s restlessness, and the soil stirred with spilled blood. Sarmatia was severe, but Britain nourished rebellion. “What do you want me to do, apologize for what I’m not?”

The laugh that Lancelot produced was low and parched with bitterness. “You do that already. So much that I choke on it. So pious, so compassionate, that Artorius Castus is—so damned blind. You are _not_ the only man that feels Bedivere’s death, however determined you seem to be so.”

They were inside the camp now, and garnering curious stares with every pace that they stalked. Arthur saw a pair of centurions meditatively stare at them, then turn and whisper together. Wonderful. The last thing he needed was more rumors about the oddities of the Sarmatians; it’d only been two years since they had come, but with every passing day, a transfer elsewhere looked less and less likely. And if they were here to stay, then they had to be especially careful.

That was a mood to which Lancelot was not very conducive, and while Arthur wouldn’t change anything about the other man, he couldn’t help but think sometimes that it would be a little easier if Lancelot were only…and then he hated himself for thinking such things. A bout with Pelagius’ essays usually helped, plus a perusal of the few other scrolls Arthur had managed to acquire, but in this case, they probably wouldn’t be enough. “Lancelot. I mourn the knights I lose because I happen to cherish them that much. If you were to—if you were to—”

“If I were to die,” Lancelot finished, savagely twisting the words out of his mouth. He grabbed onto the side of the door and kneed it open, then swung in. Barely-contained rage shadowed his every movement; as it was Lancelot, he still looked incredibly good like that, but Arthur shouldn’t have even been considering such notions.

Except damn it, anger had a stinging, peppery scent that did increasingly strange things to him. It knotted his reason in on itself and let out the blacker parts of his mind to roam free among the jerking, furious energy that filled his body.

“If I were to die, you’d stand by my pathetic little grave and mutter prayers that I don’t believe in. And then you’d use me to scourge yourself at every chance you got, whether I would have wanted you to or not.” Banging down the corridors, Lancelot scattered people out of his way like a wolf plunging into a flock of sheep. He stopped to catch the waist of one woman, who was scurrying from a bedroom—the tiny objective part of Arthur’s mind made a note of that—and spun her about, a ferocious smile on his face. “Well met, lady. You’re a bright sight in these dark halls.”

She nervously giggled and vibrated back-and-forth, as if unsure whether to encourage or discourage him. Arthur unclenched his teeth and came forward to lead her away. “No women allowed in the barracks,” he told her. “Please leave.”

As they watched her go, Lancelot leaned in and pushed his smirk up to Arthur’s face. “Any other time, you might’ve invited her back with us.”

“If you were to die, I would do more than just weep,” Arthur snarled, grabbing that insolent fool by the shoulders and dragging him into the next room. The door slammed into one side of the entrance, while on the other Arthur pinned Lancelot to the wall and mashed the smugness off the other man’s face. He dragged himself away long enough to let Lancelot breathe, then lunged in and sucked the air right out of Lancelot’s lips. “If you were to die, I’m _afraid_ of what I would become. So don’t you—ever—say that again.”

Perhaps they should have invited the girl. Because now Lancelot’s mouth was swollen and bruising dark, which was going to be hard to explain.

“Ah. We’re just going to leave.” Gawain’s apology made them all jump: Arthur and Lancelot closer together and Gawain a little farther from them. “Sorry. We’re…”

“Leaving.” Tristan was already halfway out the door, and he was only that slow because he had to haul along a plainly curious Gawain. He yanked the other knight the rest of the way and closed the door. “There’s a lock, by the way.”

Lancelot buried his face in Arthur’s shoulder and sighed. “I hate how he does that.”

There was a witty response to that somewhere, but the anger was still roiling about the edges, filing the sharpness off Arthur’s brain. His fingers fisted in Lancelot’s clothes, around arms that winced and tried to wrench away, but he wouldn’t let them. “I want you. I want you so much that sometimes I don’t think even salvation could compare.”

For a long moment, Lancelot stayed frozen against Arthur. Then, like water rolling downhill, he relaxed and settled against Arthur’s chest. “You’ve had me for years, you know. I’d just like to be able to have you once in a while, aside from the duty and the God and the equality for all.”

“That would be nice.” The fury was abating now, smoothing over as Arthur learned all over again the lines and slopes of Lancelot’s back and sides, memorizing their gracefulness to hold against the inelegant brutality they dealt out every day. He promised himself that he would quit working early and spend a little more time on the other necessities in his life. But first—

“The orders. Try to remember you’re not married to them. If you don’t show up for dinner again, the men are going to start wondering seriously.” When Lancelot backed off this time, he wore an ironic smile that did little to cover up his festering disappointment. But he went quietly enough.

Arthur watched him go, then stayed a moment longer, basking in the scent that still hung in the air. Only after that did he leave himself and head for his room.

* * *

“That explains a lot. Like why Arthur hasn’t yet killed that mouthy bastard.” Whistling his continuing amazement, Gawain hopped up on the fence besides Tristan and spread the broken bridle across his knees. He spent five minutes of visibly increasing frustration threading his needle, then started sewing. When he concentrated, Tristan noticed, Gawain tended to stick the tip of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth.

The knife Tristan had been sharpening was the last one, so he put away it and the whetstone and got out the half-made jesses he’d been working on for the past week. “You mean you didn’t know?”

“That they were that serious? Of course not. Lancelot’s such a…” Gawain stopped his mending and stared. “You did?”

“Since we left Sarmatia. There’ve been women, but they meant next to nothing in comparison.” Just one more piece of leather, and the jesses would be done. Tristan was fairly sure he’d brought the necessary bit along, but he didn’t remember exactly where on himself he’d stashed it, as it’d been in a hurry. He dug around, producing various random trinkets but no leather.

Frowning, Gawain plucked a carved fragment of bone from Tristan’s hand. “I think I’ve seen this before.”

“In some Woad’s hair. I took that from the last one I killed.” Tristan retrieved the bit and resumed searching, but he still had no luck.

Curiosity from earlier still unsatisfied, Gawain kept picking away things for closer examination. “Wait. This one—” he waved a battered piece of ivory “—I really do remember. That one puffed-up legionary bragged about it for days. All the way from Egypt, he said.”

Well, the jesses could wait a few more days; it would be at least that long before the starving, weak fledging Tristan had found would be fit for flight. So he put them away and got out the knife with the broken hilt instead, then took back the ivory piece and began carefully shaping it. “Maybe.”

Gawain had a touch of disbelief in his smile, nestled right under the pride. “Well, it’ll help kill more Woads as part of your knife.”

Tristan kept his face carefully blank, but he had a feeling Gawain could still see through it. Occasionally that worried him, but not ever very seriously. “I…found it.”

Laughing, Gawain clapped him on the back, then twisted about to straddle the fence. “Right. And Galahad’s the most prudent of us all.”

The good humor lasted for about two minutes, and then Gawain was drumming his fingers on the fence in time to the thoughts transparently racing over his face. He stared out at the horses in the paddock, chewing on his lip.

“They’re usually more careful than that,” Tristan finally offered. Gawain was one of the few knights that had kept an ability to be cheerful without restraint, and it was oddly painful to see him otherwise. A little disorienting as well; a man couldn’t go through life without some touchstones, and Gawain happened to be one of Tristan’s.

“I’d hope so. What happened back there didn’t look…healthy.” The words stumbled out of Gawain’s mouth, and he uncomfortably ducked his head as he spoke. This sort of thing never was Gawain’s specialty, though he was better at it than most of the knights. Bors, for one, always seemed to be in a fight with the red-head that ran the tavern.

About Vanora. Tristan hoped that Arthur had noticed that, because if those two ever got serious, the consequences would affect all the knights.

Done with the knife-handle, he knocked off the old hilt of wood and gingerly wedged the blade into the new one, then began binding it in place with some leather. Beside him, Gawain resumed working on the bridle. “What Arthur and Lancelot have seems to work well enough. Most of the time. It’s not like a normal…”

“You always know a lot about this, and I keep forgetting to ask how.” In contrast to his earlier clumsiness, Gawain was deft and quick as he moved the needle through the tough leather.

Tristan wasn’t entirely sure how much of an answer he should give to that. On the one hand, they were no longer in Sarmatia, and Gawain had accepted everything else so far with remarkable equanimity. On the other hand, Gawain also had a tendency to act as if he were like any other man, only with a slight problem. And he tended to tell Galahad everything, and Galahad was not nearly as quick to accept certain facts of life.

Ironically enough, it was Galahad that saved Tristan from a decision. The other knight suddenly appeared from around a near building and trotted up to them, grinning. He flourished a brace of freshly-killed hares, thus drenching the air with sticky-sweet, delicious blood-smell. “Good hunt. You two should’ve come along instead of doing all those chores.”

“Those chores keep our things fit for living with, thank you. I hope you got something a little more substantial than that.” Despite his sarcastic tone, Gawain looked pleased. Understandable, considering the days that they had time to go hunting were few and the usual dried meat wasn’t very palatable, even to Tristan’s undiscerning tastes.

Galahad’s grin bloomed, revealing that he had flecks of red in his teeth. “Deer. Dagonet and Bors are butchering them as we speak. Have to give up some to those foot-sloggers, but there’ll still be more than enough for us.”

“Good. I have a feeling we’ll be out again, soon.” Tristan did the last wrap of leather, then tested the blade to see if it would rock in the hilt. When it didn’t, he put it away and got down from the fence to take the hares from Galahad. They were plump with glossy coats—surprising for a winter catch. “You’ve gotten much better,” he said, looking up at Galahad. “Should rinse your mouth, though.”

“A tongue’ll do just as well,” Galahad shot back. His first reflex was still to be annoyed by any advice, though he usually took it. Eventually.

Tristan waited while Galahad tried and failed to probe the bits of meat from his teeth, then offered his largest knife. “Want to pick them out?”

“Stop it, would you?” Gawain interrupted, a bare moment before Galahad’s rising temper would have gone off. “Both of you. It’s—it’s like watching _women_.”

Both Tristan and Galahad turned to look at him, and in response, he held up his hands but didn’t take back his words. Then he quickly finished fixing the bridle and slung it over his shoulder as he dropped down to the ground. “Look, if you didn’t do it, I wouldn’t have to say it.”

But Tristan was already turning toward the new interruption. A few moments later, the hoof-beats caught the attention of the other two, and they did the same in time to greet Agravaine boiling up on a lathered horse. He reined in just long enough to shout at them—“Get packed! We’re leaving at dawn”—and then cantered off.

“Shit. I was looking forward to gorging myself and then sleeping it off,” Galahad muttered. “Now what?”

“The Romans and the Woads. What else?” Nothing to be done now except obey, so Tristan tossed the hares back to Galahad and walked off. It’d cost some of the rarities he’d scavenged, but he thought he could probably talk Alymere into watching his hawk for him while he was gone.

A hand touched his shoulder, then ghosted down his arm. “See you at meal-time then,” Gawain said.

Galahad didn’t say anything, but he nodded at Tristan as he trotted after Gawain. Which was the best that could be expected from him, Tristan supposed. Given what the three of them were working themselves into.

Back in his region of Sarmatia, the surrounding lands had been impenetrable enough for the occasional outcast to elude his hunters, and so over time a kind of shadow tribe had evolved, always skulking about the edges of their former homes. He’d spent his first month with them, but isolation and longing had twisted the humanity out of them, and in the end, he had had to leave. His brother had stayed, in a manner of speaking. Tristan hoped that someone had buried him.

That was really all he thought he was lacking in now: someone to make his grave after he was dead. Though sometimes when he rolled against Gawain, and yes, once in a while when Galahad was being tolerable, Tristan thought he might just want a little more. But he didn’t dare ask. Not when their lives were already uncertain between the dawn and dusk of a single day.

* * *

Guinevere sprawled out in the branches above the meeting of elders, though she was careful not to rattle anything, or otherwise betray her presence. That was hard, given how the chill of the evening was effortlessly cutting through her meager clothing and the coating of grease on her skin, but she managed it.

“The latest retreat has left this village exposed. Most of its people have fled to behind the wall, but some traitors still remain. The scouts say they leave the river unguarded at night.” The youngest elder scratched a rough sketch into the dirt. “We can boat down, slaughter them, and be back within the morning.”

Merlin hummed, so deep in his throat that Guinevere almost expected the earth shake with it. “And why this village? There are closer ones. Easier prey.”

“Because a Roman officer goes there, the one who buys foodstuffs for the army. He dallies with his mistress whenever he comes for supplies. We’ve watched him. When he goes, we’ll go.” The other man looked up, and even from the awkward angle, Guinevere could see the war fever shining out of his eyes. She felt it hit in her belly and spread downwards, like drinking hot soup and feeling the heat travel through her.

Impassive, Merlin continued to study the rough map while the others fidgeted and coughed, impatient for a decision. He at last nodded. The rest of the elders instantly slipped away, undoubtedly to work their men up to fighting pitch, and left him alone in the clearing.

He stretched out a finger and corrected an inaccuracy in the map. “What do you think?”

“Good plan. It’ll be a black eye for the Romans. But…” Guinevere bit her lip, thinking. Her excitement got the better of her nervousness and she dropped down to squat beside Merlin. “The river. It will be all right going down, but going up would be harder.”

“Exactly. Good.” Merlin’s huge hand briefly swept over Guinevere’s head. “So?”

Well…Guinevere bent down and eyed the grooves cut into the dirt. She closed her eyes and imagined the corresponding water, trees, hills and valleys, watching them rise in her mind and then sink below so she could see the little men and women running over and around them. “I think we should go by the river for the attack, but plan to go home through the woods. And I think we should attack at night.”

“Very good.” The staff thumped its approval, making Guinevere beam. “Though I want to go at night for different reasons.”

Guinevere blinked. “Hmm?”

“I think the Romans will send their Sarmatian knights to escort this officer. And I want to see those _men_ for myself. I want to see this Arthur…” Merlin’s eyes were glittering with some distant contemplation as he stared at the soil. Then he glanced at Guinevere, and for a second, his eyes glowed gold.

“You also think they’re…they’ve…” It was an awkward thing to discuss because for the longest time, the Britons had been certain that they were the only people with such an advantage. But now, rumors suggested that their final reserve path of survival was no longer unique. Moreover, that it was shared by their most ferocious and skilled enemies.

Slow and languid, Merlin moved his hand through the dirt and raked it clean. “We shall see. We shall see.”

* * *

Lancelot had just finished packing when Arthur caught him. Literally. Coming from behind, arms wrapping around his waist and hauling him against leather-clad muscle so a hot mouth could fix onto his throat. His breath immediately died away, and he could only grab at Arthur’s arms and hang there, gasping for air that never seemed to be enough.

“You were distracted,” Arthur murmured, licking a wet burn from Lancelot’s ear to his collarbone. “I got in and locked the door, and you didn’t even notice.”

“Some advantages to having more rooms than soldiers, then.” The dark mood from earlier hadn’t lifted—Arthur’s sudden impulsiveness had more than a touch of desperation to it—but it had transmuted to a smoldering heat that as far as Lancelot was concerned was free to blister him to death. 

If it would open up Arthur again. Every time the other man snapped shut, it was more and more difficult to pry into him. Lancelot’s greatest fear was that some day, he would try and fail, and Arthur the man would be lost to him forever.

But that wasn’t now, and if he wanted to put off that day, he needed to start doing something. A good way to start would be to twist about and drag Arthur down to the cot, so Lancelot did just that. Something jabbed him in the side—sword-belt. He twisted to take it off and found himself entangled in a violent, addictive kiss.

The belt eventually came off, and with it went all the clothing that covered the upper half of Lancelot’s body. Arthur ran his palms wherever he could reach, rippling fingers over ribs, stroking over muscles as they clenched and unstrung. His mouth ravaged from jaw to throat back up to lips, sucking hard on Lancelot’s lower lip.

Much, much fiercer than usual. Lancelot curled his fingers into Arthur’s shoulders and tried to breathe around the waves of hazy pleasure that insisted on drowning him. All he got, however, were huge gulps of intoxicating scents, all originating from Arthur: skins and metal, _skin_ and sweat. Nervousness, after all this time. Though it was much weaker than the aggression and possession that rolled off Arthur as heavy as any British rain, that pulsed down into Lancelot with every swipe of Arthur’s tongue and every graze of his teeth.

“You—you have no idea what you do to me,” Arthur groaned, chewing on Lancelot’s shoulder. His hand lifted to yank at his own clothing, and Lancelot sluggishly moved to help. “Damn it, you—it’s like tasting damnation, and liking it. I just want—whenever you’re near—”

“Stop mixing me up with your Christianity. I’ll live in hell, and I’ll gladly go to it, if it even exists.” Quick as he could given his tendency to start melting like red-hot ore around Arthur, Lancelot shucked the last interfering layers off of them. Then he wrapped his arms around Arthur and dragged them together, trying to bury himself in the physical slide-rasp of flesh and the sweltering heat that wrapped about them. “It’s my damned soul, and I get to decide what I do with it.”

Arthur’s pupils had shrunk to pinpricks, while faintly glowing gold ringed his irises. He propped himself up on his elbows and stared at Lancelot as if he were seeing straight through. One of his knuckles ran down the side of Lancelot’s cheek, making it turn. As if in a dream, Lancelot watched himself lick at the veins in Arthur’s wrist, then at the tendons that were standing so far out from the skin. He distantly heard the growl rumble up from deep in Arthur’s chest, and felt his own answering one well up within him.

“I would leave it alone. If I didn’t know that what you do, you do for me.” It was impossible to tell whether Arthur sounded happy or angry about that, and then it was impossible to think about it because lips were roughly nursing Lancelot’s nipple, and fingers were fumbling oil across his belly, then slipping it inside where it slicked over his tightening muscles.

He threw back his head, forcing himself to breathe more slowly and relax, and consequently caught a glimpse of the shattered lamp on a nearby table. Precise and careful as Arthur was, he was also responsible for more broken things in Lancelot’s room than anyone else. Not that Lancelot minded. Not when he could get clever fingers teasing his prick into slapping its hardness against his stomach, when he could get bluntness implacably shoving itself inside him, filling and securing and imprinting deep inside the knowledge that he at least had this much from Arthur that he could call _his_.

They’d whored together too many times for Lancelot not to notice that Arthur never broke apart this much with anyone else. Never squeezed his eyes shut till the lines of strain in his brow threatened to become permanent, never let himself go past the point of even fragmented speech. Arthur couldn’t talk now, could only drop his face into the cot beside Lancelot’s head and muffle wild cries while he completely lost control of himself.

Pain spiraled up alongside the pleasure, but only as edging. Mere decoration compared to the bone-deep wrenching bliss that twisted Lancelot around Arthur, that had him use nails and knees and everything else to urge on the other man until he too seemed to find it.

Settling was something like being a falling snowflake, Lancelot imagined. Once one hit the ground, it locked with its fellows and became inseparable. Solid.

“Are you going to be able to ride tomorrow?” The regret was already back in Arthur’s voice.

Rolling his eyes, Lancelot shoved at Arthur’s shoulders until he had enough room to slide free. Then he experimentally flexed his thighs. Winced a bit, but it was a good, healthy burn that promised a long reminder. “You’re not that good.”

To his relief, Arthur slowly grinned at that. Bent down and rasped stubble over Lancelot’s still-trembling skin. “Don’t tempt me to try again.”

“If I didn’t, no one else would.” Lancelot hooked his arms around Arthur’s neck and slumped, letting his body weight hold the other man in place. “Don’t leave yet.”

“I have to. Sooner or later.” But Arthur was just as reluctant, preoccupied as he seemed to be with lapping up all the sweat on Lancelot’s face.

His words still stung, truth in them lacerating too deep. Lancelot twined his legs around Arthur’s as best he could, given that they still had trousers puddled around their knees and boots on—shit, his cot had to be a mess. “Rome’s going to have the rest of your life. Give me a little longer.”

“You…” Arthur sighed. And stayed.

* * *

An annoying bit of deer meat was firmly wedged between two of Galahad’s back molars, and every attempt to remove it only made the dull throbbing pain in his jaw ache even harder. He ducked his head, trying to dig it up with his thumbnail without anyone noticing.

“Galahad!”

Which of course guaranteed that Arthur would. And once he had, everyone did. “Sorry, sir.”

“Do that again and I’ll have your ass nailed to the stable doors,” Agravaine hissed. Bastard. And a damned uptight one since he’d gotten command of Galahad’s decury, as if having nine men report to him was such a great honor.

Gawain surreptitiously kicked Galahad, then nodded toward the reddening Agravaine. It was difficult, but Galahad managed to swallow his initial retort and choke out, “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“All right, one more time so there aren’t any misunderstandings.” Arthur was casually standing in his stirrups so he could be seen by everyone; the stance put him directly in the sunlight, which thoughtlessly highlighted a bite-mark that was just peeking out of his collar. “We’re escorting Lucius Marcius Phillipus down to collect the taxes from the surrounding villages, then scouting out the surrounding area while he’s arranging for transportation. There’ve been some reports of Woad movements, and I want to know what they’re doing this far south.”

“As if they haven’t been edging closer and closer as we give up land,” Galahad muttered. He didn’t particularly care about whether Rome lost her empire, but he did chafe against formally ceding land that, only a few months ago, knights had given up their lives to protect.

On Galahad’s other side, Tristan slanted a warning look. As if Gawain hadn’t lectured enough last night about the need to be extra careful because they were going to be working with knights that didn’t know the whole truth about them. Honestly, it wasn’t as if Galahad hadn’t been doing that for the past two years.

“Any questions? No? All right—Agravaine and Kay, you’re with Phillipus and the wagons. I’ll be riding point.” Arthur sat down and wheeled his horse down the path. Though everyone was grumbling a little at the early hour, they nevertheless quietly fell in behind.

Gawain walked his horse up to Galahad, grinning as he watched Lancelot trail after Arthur. “He looks sore.”

“Got a whore that bit back, did he?” It was a common enough riposte where Lancelot was concerned, so Galahad was rather confused when Gawain suddenly doubled over in a fit of coughing. “Gawain? Gawain? Are you choking?”

“No. No.” After a minute, Gawain managed to get himself under control. He flapped a limp hand at Agravaine to show that there wasn’t a problem, then glanced at an expressionless Tristan. “Nothing…think I’m going to drop back, see if I can pry some more information out of the cart drovers. Arthur’s bringing too many knights for just a few wagons.”

Which left Galahad with Tristan, who may have been a marvel at scouting and at fighting, but whose presence irritated in a way which obscurity only added to the grating. “What the fuck was Gawain laughing about?” Galahad mumbled, not really expecting an answer.

Consequently, he got one. “Are you going to keep your mouth shut, or will this turn out like the time with Agravaine and the village girl?”

“Wouldn’t have been long before he accidentally bit her head off. I was doing her a fav—” Tristan had a very lowering glare, considering he was only a little older than Galahad. “No, this won’t. I can keep quiet. You know that.”

“I wonder sometimes.” They were clattering out of the camp now, and Tristan was clearly itching to ride out into those woods, wander around in places that drove other men mad with their eerie, misty impenetrability. His fingers twitched on his reins. It was an oddly reassuring sight.

For his part, Galahad kept his eyes fixed on the road before them. The sooner they got there, the sooner they could get back behind Hadrian’s Wall. Skulking about under the protection of a barrier irked the large part of Galahad that yearned for wide-open steppes, but he hated even more the feeling of eyes always on his back, and that was what he always felt when they went out. The damned Woads were everything.

“Arthur and Lancelot are…if they were animals, you would say mated.” Tristan’s calm whisper was in stark contrast to the worry that was uncharacteristically visible on his face. “Our kind make bonds for life.”

“Oh.” The mild sound was a placeholder while Galahad’s mind instantly froze, then slowly unthawed. “Oh. All right. But who’s going to tell them that?”

His question earned him the sharpest glance from Tristan that he’d yet gotten.

“What? It’s not like it’s anything new. I mean, you and—and Gawain are—and I do have eyes.” Though Galahad often wished he didn’t. Or that Gawain would remember for good that Galahad was now seventeen and a man and not exactly oblivious. Or repelled.

Tristan was silent. Well, he did that a lot, but this time, it had a different quality to it. Like…sadness.

“I am. Gawain isn’t. He doesn’t know. And if you tell him—or, for that matter, talk to Arthur or Lancelot—I will gut you with my dullest knife.” And with that kind of hard razor expression, Tristan would.

“I won’t. It’s not like I hate you, you know, and even if I did, you’re still one of us.” Galahad snorted, mostly at himself for saying such ridiculous things. But surprisingly enough, they were both true and sincere. He thought it would be easier without the added presence of Tristan on the side, but he didn’t wish the other man gone. “You’re touchy today.”

For a moment, it looked as if Tristan might actually lose his temper. But then something between them evaporated, leaving behind a small, sardonic smile on Tristan’s face. He reached over and flicked his fingers at Galahad’s sword. “So you did grow up.”

Before Galahad could come up with a suitable retort, Tristan had already ridden away to the front of the group, while Gawain was coming up from behind, frowning. “What happened?”

“Ah, nothing. He just wants to be first.” Galahad grinned at Gawain, doing his best to project the right mix of sarcasm and good humor. “So? What’d you hear?”

* * *

“We’re hauling our asses out here for a woman. Tcah!” Bors leaned over his saddle and spat. “If that Roman wants his bed-toy seen safe back in the garrison, he’s got plenty of legionaries that he can use to guard her. Doesn’t have to drag us into it.”

“Downfalls of a good reputation. We’re just so fearsome that he won’t trust anyone else.” Salacious smirk firmly fixed on his face, Lancelot shifted so he could rest his elbows on his mount’s shoulders and get the pressure off his rather achy rear. “Though why Phillipus thinks she’ll be safer with me, I have no idea.”

Clueless bastard that he was, Bors bellowed a laugh and slapped Lancelot on the shoulder, thus jarring things that really didn’t need that. All right, maybe Arthur _had_ been that good. “Only if I’m elsewhere, boy.”

“Ah, yes. Last I checked, Vanora was looking quite blooming,” Lancelot replied, arching an eyebrow. He snickered at Bors’ annoyed expression, but the fast-falling night wasn’t terribly conducive to high spirits, and soon they were back into nervous, crass humor. If there was any one duty Lancelot hated most, it had to be night-watch. Even mucking out the stalls wasn’t too bad in comparison; at least then he was doing something that he could clearly see. And smell. Even if it was all shit.

Sitting on a skittish horse in the dark, space between his shoulders itching for the phantom arrows he knew were aimed at it, was an entirely different story. He wanted to get off his horse and shift to his better senses, roam around and check out all those damned crackling shadows for himself, but he couldn’t. No, instead he had to stay put and act like he wasn’t begging for something to happen so he could put his uncertainty out of its misery.

“She’s pregnant.” Bors had spoken so softly that Lancelot almost hadn’t recognized the voice as him.

“What?” The word came out before Lancelot had completely thought things through. When he had, the shock jerked him up and thumped his sore ass. “Fuck! Wait—what?”

Beneath him, his horse suddenly whinnied and danced a little. Its unease spread to Bors’, and for several moments they were preoccupied with calming their steed.

Once everything was calm again, Bors turned to face Lancelot, stricken face clear enough in the dim light. “She’s pregnant. Two months, and I haven’t told her what we are.”

“Well, you’ve got to now,” Lancelot hissed, trying to keep his voice down so as not to set off the horses again. He curled and uncurled his fingers around the saddle horn, desperately wishing Bors had told someone else. Like Arthur. Arthur would’ve known how to deal with this, but Arthur was across the village, checking on the other guards. “Of all the—Bors. Are you a complete idiot?”

“Maybe. I think I’m in love with her.” And damn him, he actually looked happy about that.

Lancelot sank back down. “This is getting worse and worse.”

“I know, all right? I hope for my discharge just like everyone else, but in the meantime, I’m not going to turn down anything good I can get here. And she’s that.” Bors was now alternating between dove-cooing satisfaction and complete terror. His horse had noticed, and it was acting up again. “I think she’ll take it all right. Really, Lancelot. These Britons…they’ve got some funny stories, you know. Like this one they tell about—”

On the other hand, the prickling on the back of Lancelot’s neck wasn’t entirely due to him being upset at Bors. Lancelot waved the other man silent and desperately shushed their horses, straining his hearing and sight as far as those senses would go.

Nothing but a bad feeling that wouldn’t go away.

“How long till Arthur reaches here?” Lancelot asked, though he already knew the answer to that. He and Arthur had been together so long that their timing was just about instinct to each other. “Never mind. Do you think you can raise Agravaine and Tristan without waking the whole damn place?”

“I’m already awake,” whispered a voice from the ground. One spine-chilling heartbeat later, Tristan melted out of the dark, creeping low to the grass. “We’re being surrounded.”

Another whiff of the still air brought just the faintest hint of woad paint and grease mixed with sweat; normally, that wouldn’t be enough for suspicion given its ubiquity around Britain, but combined with Tristan’s testimony…Lancelot reached over a shoulder and laid a hand on one of his hilts. “Right. Have you told Arthur and Kay?”

“Just now. Arthur assigned Kay to guard Phillipus and sent Agravaine to watch the road. You’re to gather up the rest of your decury and move to the river. Arthur will meet you there.” A flash of dull gray interspersed with silver, and then Tristan was gone.

“Hope he didn’t greet Kay like that. Man hates wolves, and he’s always looking askance at us.” With a last grim chuckle, Bors tugged at his reins and eased his horse toward the next guardpoint: Dagonet and Gareth.

Following, Lancelot slid out his right sword as quietly as he could. The rasp of blade against scabbard was worryingly loud in the dead silence, and so he held off on getting out his other one. He was going to need one hand free for any hard riding, anyway.

“Lancelot?”

“Hmm?” The river. Figured. Nice landing beach there, and stupid Phillipus had insisted on a heavy guard around his whore’s house, which had kept Arthur from having enough knights free to properly address that weak spot. He’d made do by setting extra guards on it, but it was still a bad situation.

Bors’ saddle creaked as he leaned over. “If I die before I can tell Vanora, I want you to do it. And tell her I’m sorry. I would’ve told her earlier if I’d known she was that way.”

“Don’t tell me that!” Lancelot tried not to punch the other man. He forced himself to take a deep breath, to concentrate on listening to the woods. “All right, I will. But if you do die, I’ll be damned annoyed at that, so you’d do better not to.”

“You don’t know how to treat a vixen like that proper, anyhow,” Bors snorted, sounding more like himself. “Dagonet? Gareth?”

Two horses unsheathed themselves from the dark, their knights tall blotches on the black. Lancelot could just about make out Dagonet’s nod. “Down to the river, you two. Care for a bit of Woad-spearing?”

Their grins were white enough to light up the sky.

* * *

Despite its name, it was more of an uncommonly broad stream than a river, full of flattish boulders that were irregular humps sticking out of the inky swishing water. Shallow enough for fording, but Gawain bet it could freeze a man to death in a matter of minutes. He really did hate fighting in winter. Shame that the Woads didn’t keep to a campaigning season like every other marginally civilized people.

Well, couldn’t be helped, and could only be put up with. With that in mind, he nudged his horse forward, trying to keep to the softer turf where the hoof-beats would be muffled. Unfortunately, the grass was thick with frost, and crunched so loudly that he wondered if Londonium could hear it. “Arthur?” he whispered.

Part of the night detached and slipped out to meet him. Arthur looked more tired than usual—probably from having to make nice to that ass Phillipus, and from keeping Kay’s decury from touching off something nasty with the other two. While the knights under Kay had no idea about the true make-up of the other two decuries, they must have sensed something because they were noticeably uneasy, even around Arthur. “Gawain?”

“Agravaine says that no one seems to be appearing on our side, and do you want him to swing round to you?” Someone else peeled away from the group Gawain could now make out on the riverbank. He started to reach for his ax, but then recognized Lancelot.

“No, stay where you are for now. That road’s our exit, and I want it held at all costs.” Arthur pursed his lips, thinking. “But if you hear fighting from here, call up Kay to hold the road and wheel down, but upstream of us so you catch the Woads’ flank. Phillipus can make do with the personal guard he brought.”

Gawain was just about to nod when the first howl came from the river. Halfway to meet them, Lancelot instantly whirled around and sent his horse plunging down the bank, while Arthur whipped out his sword and also turned toward the water. “Go! Tell Agravaine!”

Even though he wasn’t truly running from the fight, it still was hard to ride in the opposite direction. But those were his orders, and Arthur had pulled them out of too many debacles for Gawain to question them now. He whipped the reins over his horse’s hindquarters and let them fly over the ground without any regard to secrecy. It wasn’t needed now.

Agravaine stared, arm thrown up against the dirt clods, as Gawain skidded into the gathered knights of his decury. “What’s going on?”

“They’re attacking at the river,” Gawain gasped, already breathless. “Arthur says—get Kay up here, and then we’re going round to come down upstream of them—turn the flank—”

Already standing up in his stirrups, Agravaine twisted and roared: “Galahad! Get Kay and his bastards out here! Everyone else, to me! You charge when I tell you, and not a moment before or I’ll string you to a tree for the Woads to play with!”

“In this kind of night, I think I’d rather fight off the horse,” Tristan muttered as he raced by.

Gawain spun and sent his charger after the other man, easily matching gallops as they’d done so many times before. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’re too many witnesses.”

“The ones on our side are staying in town, and the ones on the Woads’ side are going to be dead. But the horses won’t go near the water.” Tristan had palmed one of his knives somewhere along the line; it flashed once before he pressed it between hand and saddle.

“Well, I’d hope _we’d_ stay out of the water. We don’t have enough men to go running around on the other bank. Even on four legs instead of two.”

They reached the fighting before Tristan could deliver an answer, and then they were in the middle of a deafening cacophony: shouts, screams, glittering blades and blood spraying in black gouts all over. Agravaine shouted for them to form line, and Gawain had only the vaguest sense of obeying, thanks to the in-grained habits of drills and two years of hard fighting.

The Woads had come up in small round boats that were barely distinguishable from the river rocks, and so they’d managed enough surprise to gain a narrow strip of beach. But Arthur and the others with him had stopped the advance there and tangled the Briton front line in a morass of rearing horses and plunging swords. They were holding for the moment, but more Woads were still coming out of the river, and soon there would be enough to either push back the knights by sheer mass or to well around the knights’ undefended sides. It didn’t help that it seemed the knights were having trouble keeping their horses aimed toward the water; the animals whinnied and bucked whenever they got too near the river. Bad footing—loose pebbles, if Gawain remembered right—ice patches and freezing water. Another few minutes, and Arthur might lose the bank.

If reinforcements weren’t already waiting. Gawain missed Agravaine’s yell, but did see his leader’s sword rise and fall; in response his heels went into his horse’s sides and he leaped forward with the rest of the line. The land sloped slightly downwards, adding to their momentum, and so when they cannonaded into the side of the Woad force, they managed to carry forward several yards before the press of flesh brought them to a stop.

By that time, Gawain had already chopped through at least two that weren’t going to live to see another day, and probably three more that were going to have a tough time of it. He heard the whine of an arrow and threw himself forward just in time for a flight of them to pass overhead.

“Sons of whores—” Agravaine clutched at the arrow in his side, folding over it. Two Woads spotted him and ran up, but Gawain was already shoving through. He caught one of them with the backhand of his mace, then tossed his ax at the other. It struck home, and he had just enough time to retrieve it before the body slipped into the trampled mud. And Agravaine looked to be going the same way.

“Shit.” Gawain grabbed at Agravaine’s shoulder and tried to hold him up, but the other man’s eyes were already rolling back into his head. His teeth started to rattle, and thick fluids welled out from between his lips. “Oh, shit.”

“Hey! Watch your back!” Galahad suddenly hammered in, his horse’s hooves crushing a Woad that had been about to stab Gawain in the leg. The swirl of the fighting carried him on, dragging his horse towards the spot where Bors was laying waste, so he should be fine.

But those arrows…fuck, across the river. Tristan had been right to worry. “Sir,” Gawain urgently whispered. He kept slashing away with his free hand, trying to keep the Woads away. “Sir. You—”

The last particle of lucidity in Agravaine’s eyes focused on Gawain, and then Gawain was shoved away so hard he nearly fell off the other side of his horse. He grabbed a fistful of mane to steady himself, then had to let go and bash in another skull with the mace.

“I _hate_ Britons,” Agravaine growled, not in Latin but in his mother-tongue. He toppled off, and Gawain had to gasp because that was all he could do, given that both his hands were busy killing.

But instead of being trodden to death, Agravaine rolled away and came up on all fours. He snarled again and sprang for the nearest blue-painted throat, knocking over the terrified Woad in a welter of blood. Neither of them got back up.

So much for hiding. The thought was a tiny spark in Gawain’s numbed brain. It flared up just as a huge wolf came out of nowhere, leaping for his face. His arms came up, crossing mace and ax, and he beat the animal off. Would’ve killed it, too, if his horse hadn’t been in the grips of uncontrollable hysteria. Battle it could take, blood and dying men it could handle, but gigantic wolves apparently called up too many instincts for it to ignore. Gawain could barely keep himself on top on it.

Tristan swooped in, his horse nowhere in sight. His sword slashed down, and the howling beast before him fell. Twisted into the limp body of a Woad.

“God—they have them too.” Arthur had burst through the intervening wall of attackers just in time to see. “Almighty God.”

“And now we both know about each other,” Tristan remarked. He was coolly fitting arrow to bowstring, and when he had finished speaking, he let fly. 

Across the river, there was a high cry and a crashing sound. By that time, Tristan had already loosed another arrow, and now that his horse had finally stopped bucking, Gawain could see other knights doing the same; the fighting on the shore had seemed to come to a head with Agravaine and the Woad-beast, and now it had more or less died away. Dagonet and Bors were going among the survivors, killing the Britons and lifting the wounded knights back onto their horses.

Lancelot trotted up, both horse and man smeared with blood. His eyes were still glowering gold, though they were slowly fading back to their normal dark grey. “Well, here’s a pretty surprise. Though I doubt it’s in either of our best interests to spread the news.”

“No…” Arthur shivered, then looked up and across the river. On the far bank, which had been previously empty, a huge, burly Briton now stood. He held a staff, but by the looks of him, that had nothing to do with a need for support.

Then Arthur did a curious thing: face stiffened to stone, he dismounted and stalked down to the river bank to stop at the very edge, boot-tips in the water. Cursing, Lancelot and the rest scrambled to get arrows nocked and ready, just in case someone on the other side decided to take advantage of the fine target Arthur presented.

One moment it was a Briton matching glares with Arthur, and the next it was a magnificent wolf, white teeth bared in a silent snarl.

“What—” Lancelot started, but then he stopped and stared like everyone else.

Arthur had done the same thing.

Gawain pinched himself to check if he was dreaming, but unfortunately, he wasn’t. He watched in disbelief as Arthur and the Briton shook themselves back to two legs, as the Briton raised his staff for a second and held it there, then whisked himself back into the woods. Meanwhile, Arthur was shaking the water off of his hands.

Tristan was the first to speak. “Do we go after them?”

“No. No. And it was good that you didn’t shoot, either. Merlin has an army in those woods, and we couldn’t have won. Neither side can press forward, so it’s a stalemate.” Arthur closed his eyes and tilted back his head, moving as if his aches were catching up to him. “Gawain. Since Agravaine’s dead, you’re to take over for him. Coordinate with Lancelot and get things here cleaned up. I’m for the village; I suppose someone’s got to calm Phillipus down. And I trust that I don’t have to say that nothing unusual happened here.”

“Just your ordinary night ambush, duly repelled by the good knights of Sarmatia,” Lancelot said. His smile was strained, but the humor was real enough and it did a great deal to lighten the tense mood. Even Arthur seemed to relax a little. “So that was the famous Merlin. Bit of a sorcerer after all.”

Arthur turned away and headed for the village, though he did pause long enough to deliver a sharp reply. “He’s not any more of one than we are. Get to work.”

Visibly stung, Lancelot opened his mouth to say something. Then he seemed to think the better of it and turned to Gawain instead. “Well? How’s it feel to be promoted?”

“Bloody,” Gawain replied. He looked at Agravaine’s broken body, then glanced away before he embarrassed himself. Uptight son of a bitch or not, he had been a good knight and leader.

And he was dead, and they weren’t. Moving on, Gawain thought. Right. He could still do that.

* * *

Lancelot didn’t slip into Arthur’s bedroll until near dawn, which left them perhaps a half-hour before they had to rise. Still, Arthur wasn’t at all annoyed by the disturbance, and when he lifted his arm, Lancelot eagerly curled beneath it. He pulled the other man as close as he could, both to conserve warmth and to smell the life that seemed to always soak Lancelot.

“You and Merlin.” A cold nose poked Arthur’s throat.

“He killed my mother. He’s why I left Britain.” And he was now killing Arthur’s knights, the face to the enemy in the shadows, and as the night had shown, he truly was at the bottom of every single question in Arthur’s life. “Now I wonder which parent gave this to me.”

At that, Lancelot lifted his head to show eyelashes that were already fluttering with exhaustion. He was solemn with his fatigue, and still caring in that unique combative, backhanded way of his. “You sound like you’re ashamed of it. And when you’ve spent all those years to convince us otherwise.”

“I’m not. I’m…” Arthur closed his eyes and burrowed his head beneath Lancelot’s chin. “My father was a knight that was hunted by his own people. My mother was in the same situation, and now I’m…I only wonder about what passes along in the blood and what comes from living.”

“Well, I never met either one of your parents, so I’ll never know and frankly, I don’t really care.” Lancelot rested his hands on Arthur’s waist and laid his cheek against the top of Arthur’s head. He squirmed a little so more of the blankets fell on him.

Smiling was painful, but Arthur was happy to find that he could still do it. He had so many things to think over, much to plan for, but he also had steady comfort lying right beside him and it would be churlish not to appreciate what Lancelot was doing. Irresponsible hotheaded brat that he was, but if Arthur was going to be haunted by a face, he’d rather it be Lancelot’s than Merlin’s.


	4. Battleground

“Well, it’s a decent plan.” Gawain squatted over the rough sketch Lancelot had made on the ground with sticks and pebbles, studying the layout. He caught sight of Galahad’s confused face and obligingly explained the main points of the strategy. “Main army here on the plain, looking small and weak. Reinforcements hiding up on the hills. They’ll charge down once the Woads have been drawn into the center of the plain and fall on the Woads’ rear.”

“And the Woads are going to be stupid enough to come into the center because we’ll ride out, convince them that we’re pathetically easy to beat, and then gallop back like our tails are on fire. Because if we don’t go fast enough, those idiot archers in the Roman lines are going to shoot us as well as the damned Britons.” Lancelot hadn’t been happy when he and Arthur had walked into the general’s tent, and he’d been even less happy once they had walked out. That had been late last night. Now, his face probably could’ve committed murder all by its lonesome. “Yes, we’ll win the battle, but for what? To keep this stupid port for a few more months so we can complete evacuation of this area.”

Tristan stopped tapping his dagger-point against the ground and thrust it into the soil, then rested his wrists on the hilt. “We have to hold it till the harvest is in, or we won’t eat. Would you rather evacuate under constant attack? And starve?”

“I’d rather not fight at all and just leave this damned country. Four years here, and all we do is give up land. There wasn’t much to fight for in the first place, and now the Romans are making sure that we’re doing it for nothing. They could at least tell us to our faces that they’re trying to butcher us.” Lips twisted with irritation, Lancelot stood and kicked dirt over the map. Then he sighed, all anger seeming to drain out of him as he watched the legionaries marching into position. His shoulders rolled a few times, and then he reached up to massage one; an arrow had grazed him there a few weeks ago, and Gawain wouldn’t have been surprised if the scar badly ached, given Britain’s dampness.

He stood as well and stepped up to beside Lancelot. Camp was on the middle top of three hills that were all clustered around one side of the battlefield-to-come, so from here they could see the whole sweep of the army as it deployed in the dawn mists. An impressive show, and Gawain would grudgingly admit that the legionaries generally lived up to their imposing reputation, but like Lancelot said, it was all just a temporary action. Whatever was accomplished here was doomed to be wiped out in less than a year, scraped off Britain and memory. That was what truly hurt—blood and death and pain being forgotten so quickly.

“It starts in two hours,” Tristan reminded them.

Lancelot closed his eyes and tilted his face up, as if to better feel the changes in the wind. “Then again, if we weren’t fighting, we truly would be useless. So I suppose it’s better to use the sword on yourself than let it rust.”

“You’re in a depressing mood. Keep it up and we aren’t going to have the heart to make it back to the front lines.” Gawain had never seen the point in making a bad situation worse, and neither had Lancelot. Until recently. Something had happened between him and Arthur—anyway, that was what Tristan said—and ripples from it were throwing the whole regiment awry.

Fortunately for today, Lancelot found Gawain’s remark funny and laughed, full-throated and genuine, like he hadn’t in days. He clapped Gawain on the shoulder and moved off, probably to see to his horse. Hopefully also to cheer up the men, who could use it. Two years of practice, and even the sliver of leadership Gawain had as head of a decury was still tricky to manage. He sometimes envied Lancelot’s effortless ability to handle it, but then he always remembered all the other problems Lancelot had and he felt a little better. Selfish and unkind of him, really, but what worked was what survived.

Tristan came up to Gawain’s shoulder, gazing after the departing knight. “Arthur’s suddenly realized how easy it would be to lose Lancelot, and he’s taking it out on him.”

“That’s your guess?” Gawain asked.

“It is.” The hawk on Tristan’s shoulder made a tiny disturbed noise, so he took a moment to transfer it back to his wrist, where it usually sat. “It’s hard to watch people you care for go into battle. It’s even harder if you’re the one ordering them there.”

Startled, Gawain slanted a scrutinizing look at Tristan. “That’s…I didn’t know you knew anything about it.”

A shadow flitted over Tristan’s face, making his eyes seem to recede into dark opaque pits. Then it passed, and he looked as he always did. “I watch and listen. And I learn.”

With that cryptic statement, he murmured to his hawk and loosed her legs and hood, then tossed her high into the sky. Before Gawain could collect himself for an apology over an offense he still didn’t quite comprehend, Tristan was leaving.

“And you all think I’m the slow one,” snorted Galahad. He none-too-gently smacked Gawain in the arm, then folded his arms and stared after Tristan, chewing his bottom lip like he always did prior to doing something stupid. “You know something? Lancelot’s right. We all might die today. But if we don’t, I’m not spending another four years watching this idiocy.”

Gawain grabbed for Galahad, but too late: the other man was already down the hillside and catching up to Tristan, whom he grabbed by the arm and dragged behind the nearest tent. Cursing, Gawain went after them and prayed to whatever sordid little gods actually liked living in Britain that Galahad wouldn’t be so foolish as to challenge Tristan to a fight. Those two _would_ always dance around each other, sniping and jabbing like five-year-olds who—

\--oh. Well. Now that Gawain thought about it, that comparison could be applied in that way. But who would’ve ever suspected…

Certainly not Tristan, who seemed stunned into stillness while Galahad held him by the shoulders and…very thoroughly kissed him. It looked as if they’d done a little too well in picking whores who were willing to properly initiate Galahad.

At that thought, an unexpected heat flared in Gawain’s gut and cheeks. It took him a moment to realize that it was due to a boiling mix of emotions, and it wasn’t until he noticed his nails were cutting into his palms that he identified the components as lust and jealousy.

And now Tristan had moved his hands to Galahad’s arms, fingers both pushing and pulling, and Tristan was moaning a little, and Gawain very seriously wanted to hurt them both.

Horrified by how appealing he found that thought, he stumbled backward, which at last brought his presence to the attention of the other two. Tristan’s face was uncharacteristically open, and full of…fear? On the other hand, Galahad was determined and annoyed right up until the moment he seized Gawain’s hair and yanked him down for a kiss.

Yes, Galahad definitely knew how to do that.

When they broke apart, Gawain was gasping for air and trying to blink away the spots in his vision. Galahad, on the other hand, looked little worse for the wear. “There. And stop looking so surprised. You’ve both been around, lecturing me and warning me and trying to keep me from irritating the other one of you. What did you think would happen?”

“You’re welcome,” Gawain managed to say.

Galahad rolled his eyes and stomped off, still exasperated. In his stormy wake, Gawain and Tristan stared at each other, but found nothing but confusion and uncertainty and a roused internal heat that was going to be very awkward to fight around.

Tristan blinked first. Slow and deliberate. “I’m going to kill him. I know you like him, but I am.”

“I’ll hold him down for you.” And in the time that it took Gawain to say that, a lot of little pieces started hooking together. Not fast enough for him to draw any conclusion, but enough for him to feel that conclusion coming. He stepped forward until he was less than an inch away from Tristan, and when the other man’s eyes suddenly went soft-hazy, even more so than when he looked at his hawk, then Gawain knew for sure. “Four years, and now right before a battle that’s likely to kill us. You usually have better timing than this.”

“You usually don’t notice.” Tristan started to lean forward, but then the bugle trumpeted and he jerked away.

Damn. Gawain shuffled his feet for a few seconds, trying to work himself up to it, but the bugle called again. He swore in as many fragments of languages that he knew, and then he saw the ridiculousness of the whole situation and laughed.

After a moment, Tristan added his own soft chuckle, and shaking their heads, they headed for their horses. But before they split up to ride away—Tristan now being in Lancelot’s decury—Gawain reached over and clasped Tristan’s hand. “I’ll see you afterward.”

Tristan paused, then squeezed Gawain’s fingers. He didn’t say anything as he rode off, but Gawain fancied that Tristan might have been smiling a little.

Of course, they were still going to have to deal with Galahad, that impulsive ass. But now, that might be something to look forward to. Once they’d gotten through the battle.

* * *

Guinevere tried her best pout, but Merlin’s face refused to soften.

Well, she knew when she was beaten. Next time, she’d simply have to start working on him sooner. “All right, I won’t sneak off to the battle. I’ll go north and learn how to be a leader. I promise.”

Chin propped on his knees, he locked eyes with her for a few endless, chilling minutes; Guinevere shivered and cringed, but she forced herself to meet his gaze until he looked away. Merlin passed a huge, callus-hard hand over her hair as he always did, then straightened up and took his staff from where it had been leaning against the tree. His fist slowly moved up its length, his fingers wearing its carvings ever deeper as he stared through the woods. If someone had told Guinevere then that Merlin could see through the trees all the way to the Roman port, miles away, she would have believed it.

“It’s not yet your war,” he suddenly said. “It’s mine and Arthur’s. Don’t be impatient; soon enough the gray hairs on my head will overcome the fury in my blood, and then I will have to pass it to you.”

“It’s everyone’s war.” The words came out a little more sharply than Guinevere had intended, but once they were out, there was no taking them back. When in doubt, go forward—something Merlin himself had told her once. “Whatever you two did to each other, you’re not the ones that have been dying. I still owe my parents—”

Merlin cut her off with an abrupt jerk of his staff that nearly stabbed a hole through her foot. Guinevere whipped herself back and was nearly up the nearest tree when he waved her down. His expression was almost apologetic. “Guinevere. When you’re at rest or waiting, you have all the time in the world to think of the past and future. But when you’re at war—when you fight—you only have time to think of the present. Remember that.”

A sudden coldness in Guinevere’s belly made her wrap her arms around herself. As she chafed her prickling arms, she closely watched Merlin. “You…you…are you predicting your—you can’t die! We need you!”

“I will, in time. But not today, I think. Not today.” A bird fluttered high in the tree-tops, catching Merlin’s attention. He gazed upwards with narrowed eyes, murmuring old sacred words as he listened for each wingbeat and call.

When the bird finally flew out of hearing, he glanced back at her, an uncharacteristic softness in his eyes. Then he nearly surprised Guinevere into stabbing him when he reached out and pulled her close in a brief, tight hug. Before she could even relax, he’d let go of her. “Go with the others. Watch and wait, like you always have. You’re our best, and we’re saving you for great things.”

Long after he’d left for the battle, Guinevere stood there, trying to memorize every particle of his scent and appearance. She knew it would be years before she saw him again—she refused to consider the possibility that she wouldn’t—and she didn’t want to forget anything of the man that had raised her. That had taught her not only how to fight, but how to think as well. And now she had a chance to repay him, acting as envoy to the northern tribes while he harried the Romans right back to the their great wall.

Still, Guinevere felt uneasy about today. They shouldn’t be trying to fight a straightforward battle. The strength of the Romans was in the field, and the strength of the Britons was in the forest. History had proven that over and over again, giving the storytellers a long, sad, infuriating list of defeats, yet the hotheads of the Britons insisted on trying once more. They saw only a port that was too well-supplied by river to be taken quickly, and they failed to see that for all their bravery, not a one of them thought like a true general.

Not even Merlin.

The sacrilegious thought stopped Guinevere in her tracks. Stricken with horror, she immediately tried to wipe the traitorous notion from her mind, but no matter how she tried, she could not. The truth would not go so easily into the dark, no matter its terrible appearance.

So very, very slowly, she accepted it. Truth was truth, and she could do nothing else. Except…think on it for a while. Truth was also knowledge, and knowledge was advantage. And Guinevere had long since promised herself that she would never miss a chance to win.

* * *

As Arthur waited among his men for the battle’s start, he reviewed the strategy again and again in his mind, futilely trying to reassure himself that it was sound, that it made sense, that even Lancelot hadn’t been able to come up with a reasonable objection to it so it was fine. Aside from the fact that no matter how the battle played out, the knights were guaranteed to have high casualties.

The half of the legion that was playing the “army” was arranged in typical right-wing, center, left-wing formation, with the knights playing the tips of the wings. They were supposed to pretend to be over-excited, gallop too far from the infantry and then race back, thus luring in the Woads for the hidden reinforcements’ final blow. With any luck, the massive army the Woads had somehow gathered to throw at this one crucial port would be completely destroyed.

Objectively speaking, it would be worth the sacrifice. This one battle had the potential of crushing the Britons so badly that they would need years to recover. Conversely, if the Romans lost this port too soon, then the rest of their withdrawal from Britain would be bloody, tortuous, and slow death by starvation until the legions were reduced. With the winter storms coming, that would have to wait at least till next year. So they had to fight now or fight later, and either way, Arthur’s knights would suffer.

“You know, I have no problem with dying by the sword. At least it’s better than being burned. Or rotting away in bed.” Lancelot was shifting in his saddle as if his rear was aching, though Arthur knew painfully well that that wasn’t the cause of the other man’s restlessness. It’d been a cold night since their last serious argument—talk--let alone their last shared bed. “I just have a problem with understanding why someone wants me to run onto the damn sword for their sake.”

Arthur chanced a quick glance at the other knights, but none of them were paying attention, and Tristan was across the plain in the other wing. Kay was leading that half of the knights, and hopefully he had gotten over his bout of melancholy. By rights Arthur should have put Lancelot there, but Kay ranked senior by age and still fought too well to be summarily demoted.

And, whispered a little voice in Arthur’s head, this way Lancelot was where Arthur could see him.

“No one’s asking you to kill yourself,” Arthur muttered, keeping his voice as low as possible. He prayed that Lancelot would do the same; the man was intelligent to know what the sight of officers bickering just before a fight could do to morale. “We’re—”

Rolling his eyes, Lancelot derisively fluttered his fingers against his horse’s neck. His mount snorted and pranced a bit, so he hastily patted it into complacency. “Saving Rome. Spreading Christian salvation and civilization. Yes, I remember your little speech.”

“And we’re helping to defeat the very people that have been trying to kill us—that _have_ been killing us all these years.” The irritation rising in Arthur’s throat cooled once it reached his mouth, icing his tongue with bile. His knees were beginning to lock up, and he forced his legs to hang loose and relaxed.

Out in front, the Woad lines had just finished assembling. At first and then at second glance, Arthur could see that the predictions about how many Woads could smuggle themselves past Hadrian’s Wall had been more than underestimations. Worrying enough…and then some dark glimmer caught his eye. He squinted at it. Swore and clamped his fingers around the reins. “Merlin.”

“Of course.” When Arthur looked over, Lancelot was fixedly watching the Woad leader, a strange edge of bitterness to his hatred. He glanced at Arthur, irony staining his eyes. “Wouldn’t be your war without him.”

The cold nerves in Arthur suddenly dissolved to smoldering fury. “ _What_?”

“If you’re going to put this much of yourself into a war, you might as well admit it, Arthur: there’s no ideals here. Ever since you and Merlin saw each other across that river, you’ve grown farther and farther from me. You won’t even listen to me now, let alone talk.” Lancelot started with the words boiling out of him, but by the time he had finished, he looked as drained and pale as the anemic sun above them.

Arthur, however, was in no mood to consider the meaning behind such details. He couldn’t believe—from Lancelot? From the one man he counted on to understand him, no matter what the circumstances. It was worse than a betrayal—it was like seeing death in the face of the one person on earth that could move him both to tears and to laughter.

“If you’re going to dislike so many parts of me, then perhaps you should reconsider why you bother,” he hissed back. “Don’t trouble yourself with chasing a dream, Lancelot. I am what I am.”

The raw hurt that flashed, then settled on Lancelot’s face echoed deep within Arthur, but the anger still had him and burned more fiercely than even the pain. “I do that for you,” he added. “Can’t you—”

Brassy and brutal, the bugle call permanently interrupted their conversation. And then there were the thousands of clinks and clacks and rustles all piling into cacophony as knights walked their horses out, as legionaries trudged behind. Arthur’s mind shut off its frail, distracting emotions and prepared for battle. Beside him, Lancelot rode with a flinty face that betrayed nothing of his earlier heat, and behind them both, the best of Sarmatia obligingly followed. They would follow their leaders to hell if asked.

Two minutes later, that was what Arthur demanded of them. He heard the call for charge rattle down to his marrow, heard the wild eerie shrieks of the oncoming Woad horde. The tremendous dissonance caught him in between, split his senses into disorientation as he raised his hand and waved the knights into full gallop.

His sword was somehow in his hand, heavy razor promise precipitously balanced there, and he was rising a little in the stirrups to get the right angle for a downward chop. The sight of Woad line shattered on his eyes, broke apart into individual targets with red, red mouths and blue skin like bloated corpses in the cold water. Arthur instinctively picked out a succession of targets, and then he was among them, his horse was trampling the first while his sword cut through the second. It took a third on the return stroke, and then he had to twist around to stab another one coming up on his other side.

The rhythm of hack and stab soon found him easily enough; he’d done this so many times he even dreamed of the motions, and sometimes he found himself flailing everything off the bed: him, the blankets, Lancelot—

\--a bare few feet away, cutting and slashing with a ferocious grin on his face while his horse smashed gory hooves onto shouting mouths. Arthur dimly felt himself breathing a sigh of relief that he gasped back a moment later as he narrowly dodged a spear-thrust. The point caught his sleeve but didn’t penetrate to the skin, and then Bors’ huge kukri caught Arthur’s attacker under the chin. Arthur glimpsed white vertebrae just before the gout of bright arterial blood caught him in the face. Spitting and roughly wiping at his face, he instinctively sliced down with Excalibur and felt the blade grate on bone. A second to yank it free, another to shove his horse through a gap in the fighting, and suddenly Arthur was staring at Merlin.

The burly man was about fifteen feet away, whirling both staff and sword around him with deadly accuracy. Gawain and Kay were spinning their chargers around him, darting in and out, trying to bait him into a mistake. That wasn’t going to happen. As much as Arthur hated Merlin, he didn’t fool himself as to his nemesis’ capabilities.

And then—maybe it was a stone, maybe it was a body—Kay’s stallion stumbled. A fraction too late, Gawain surged forward and tried to parry Merlin’s blow, but the staff merely swept aside Gawain’s mace and continued on to slam into his other arm.

Strange how certain sounds carried over the tumult of battle. Arthur heard the snapping bone as clearly as if he were standing right beside the fight.

Gawain went white and nearly fell from his saddle, but at the last moment his horse swerved from some other fighter and swung him back on. He grabbed for the saddle horn with his good hand and nearly got speared while he was thus defenseless, but Galahad came from out of nowhere and cut down that Woad. Then he seized the bridle of Gawain’s horse and dragged them both away while Kay covered their retreat from Merlin’s renewed assault.

By then, Arthur had already turned his horse and started driving for the fight, but a tangle of Woads and knight interfered. Lancelot was off his charger and gleefully slaughtering his less skilled opponents.

A fragment of memory stabbed Arthur’s mind. “Lancelot! Damn you, get back on a horse! Now! Retreat!”

Disbelieving eyes flicked up at him, only the faintest hint of comprehension visible in all that fighting lust. Then the both of them jerked about, pulled by a high mashed scream.

Kay had erred, and now he was paying the price, throat crushed to a bloody spurting mess. He grappled at it, choking and gurgling, as his fear-maddened horse danced back from Merlin’s red-topped staff. Before he had fallen from his saddle, Merlin was pushing past him and heading straight for Lancelot.

“Retreat! Knights, go back!” Tristan. Tristan, the only one with a cool head now, was directing the fall-back. Gawain was wounded, Kay twitching himself to death, Lancelot meeting Merlin with a fool’s smile on his face—and Arthur, still too far from that pair and frantically trying to make up the difference.

God, God. God in His Infinite Mercy, Arthur prayed. Don’t take this from me. Not this. For the love of everything good and great, not this. I can’t suffer this.

He was screaming it too, but too loudly for him to hear himself.

* * *

Two seconds in, Lancelot knew he’d made a mistake. This Merlin wasn’t only a dark sorcerer and a man with two skins like the knights, but he was also a damned good fighter. In fact, possibly the best Lancelot had ever come up against, even compared to Arthur. Even compared to himself, and when it came to fighting, Lancelot didn’t brag. His swords talked well enough for themselves.

Though they were having a hard time singing now. Merlin was incredibly fast with his staff, and his sword seemed to be many stinging wasps, flickering everywhere at once. Lancelot had his hands full just blocking blows, let alone trying to attack.

Of course, some idiot had to interfere and that forced him to turn and cleave a skull. The wind changed, air compressed, and Lancelot twisted back. Ducked. But the chaos of fighting had thrown off his senses just enough for the staff to catch him low in the belly.

It didn’t hurt. Surprisingly.

Though the pain was crippling a moment later when Lancelot dodged the sword that slashed at him. His insides flared up, burst against his ribs and choked off his air; he gasped and clawed greedily for air, but none seemed to be going into his lungs. Staggering, he dredged at his rapidly-emptying wells of strength and barely managed to parry Merlin’s next attack. His swords screeched off Merlin’s, heavy as lead as they then had to swing around to deflect that brutal staff-head.

Lancelot’s vision was swimming. He couldn’t tell whether it was from blood that’d been splashed on his face, or from tears of exhaustion. Both were equally likely.

“You’re his best knight.”

It took the span of another exchange of blows for Lancelot to recognize that Merlin was speaking to him. The idea that the stinking bastard Woad actually had enough breath to talk grated up enough anger to power Lancelot through a risky dive that mostly worked; Merlin drew back with a deep red cut across his left side, and Lancelot with a new bruise on his shoulder.

“What of it?” he panted, trying to ignore the hard press of his armor on his aches. His legs were beginning to tremble—if he let the quakes get a foothold in him, he could be down in seconds.

Merlin’s eyebrows rose over eyes that abruptly flared gold. When he smiled, his teeth briefly flashed long and then short. “Then you mean the most to him.”

That confused Lancelot. And in that small space of opportunity, Merlin drove forward, almost too fast to comprehend. Lancelot wrenched up his swords in a cross that held back the blade, but then the staff rammed into his chest again. Something cracked, releasing a flood of blinding pain.

_No_. Not to this man. Not to the one that had twisted so much of Arthur, that had laid the groundwork for everything that threatened to hammer home the wedge between him and Lancelot.

The sight of Merlin’s shock as Lancelot surged back up was almost sweeter than that of Arthur, asleep and at peace. Lancelot’s left sword missed, just grazing the skin of one arm, but his right one cut straight through Merlin’s side—

\--and stopped only half an inch in, slamming up against the staff that, impossibly, Merlin had managed to swing around. The other man had dropped his sword in order to block with both hands, but that made little difference. Only sheer will was keeping Lancelot’s hilts in his hands.

He fell to one side and one knee, one blade going at an angle into the ground. It was something to hold onto while his ribs burned a tight clasping ring around him and the Woads closed in. Snarling, Lancelot wildly lashed out, caught flesh with his blades and then the agony was too much. He stumbled and lost his balance, recovered it long enough to stab away Merlin’s arm. And then he lost it again, and this time, he knew he wasn’t going to get it back.

Lancelot looked up, and all he could see was Merlin’s sword.

“No!” And it wasn’t a human voice that said that. Human voices didn’t go that low, or roughen their words to the point where they scraped the edge of incoherency.

Merlin’s head snapped up, and then he scrambled back as a charger and knight so bloody they looked to have been flayed plunged into the mess. For his part, Lancelot was beyond strength or will—he was purely reaction. Instinct. That howling growl was something that reached down into him, twisted around his blown muscles and yanked them into standing so an arm could drag him into a saddle. Somehow, he was still holding his swords.

“I could kill you for what you do to me,” Arthur snarled into his ear. “I should. I should, but God, God—”

Roaring at full-strength, Bors and Dagonet were covering their retreat, and so Lancelot was certain that he was the only one who heard the sob in Arthur’s voice.

“God. Thank you, God. Thank you for not taking him.” The words seared against Lancelot’s neck, hurting even worse than the fire of his broken rib. Arthur was breaking, and falling away, and it was in fact Lancelot’s fault.

* * *

A bare handful of minutes. That was all, from the moment they’d hit the Woads to the moment Arthur and Lancelot had shot out of the hungry mob.

Well, at least there wasn’t a problem with the convincingness of their hurry to flee. Galahad was trying to hold two horses to the same pell-mell gallop and keep an increasingly more faint Gawain from falling to the ground, where there’d be no time to pick him up. A good third of the knights that had gone in hadn’t come back out—none of the normal ones had survived this battle, a particle of objectivity that Galahad hadn’t known he’d had—and the ones that had weren’t in good shape. Even stalwart Bors was lagging a little. 

Tristan seemed all right, but he was kept busy shooting behind them, trying to keep off the Woad archers while the knights desperately raced for the safety of the Roman lines. And Arthur—Arthur—

Galahad had never, ever even suspected that their stoic, thoughtful leader was capable of such things. For that matter, he didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone kill that many Woads that quickly. Let alone the expression on Arthur’s face, which had been verging dangerously close to shifting. In broad daylight. In the middle of a battle.

“You’re late!” yelled some puffed-up infantry officer, sitting pretty on his unblooded Italian stallion as they finally came within range of safety.

“Shut. Up!” Arthur was more hiss-roaring than speaking. His tight hold on Lancelot couldn’t be comfortable, given that Galahad was almost positive Lancelot had broken a rib—and come to think of it, the match between Lancelot and Merlin had been damned impressive itself—but Lancelot wasn’t letting Arthur loosen up at all. He had his hands clamped onto Arthur’s arm, and from the looks of things, it was going to take a lightning bolt to pry him off.

Gawain suddenly slumped forward, giving Galahad barely enough time to grab at him. Going for the shoulder, caught the broken arm instead—Gawain screamed. Nearly jolted out of the saddle.

Wincing, Galahad could do nothing but hook his fingers into the side-seam of Gawain’s armor and pull him back. “Sorry! Sorry!”

“Fuck this for a battle. I’ve had whores last longer.” If Gawain gritted his teeth any harder, his smile was going to break.

“It’s just begun,” Tristan tossed over as he drew up along Galahad’s other side. He was—his face was too pale.

Galahad swallowed hard and tried to gauge just how much longer they had to go. “I can’t carry both of you. Damn it—you’re supposed to be better than me! I’m the one that gets wounded!”

“Just be happy that we aren’t going to be able to kill you for earlier.” Tristan swayed in his saddle, then clumsily caught himself. A trickle of red leaked from his side; he caught Galahad staring horrified at it and shrugged. “It’s not bad. The leg’s worse.”

“Sometimes I can’t believe you. You’re _such_ an idiot.” Galahad’s lips were numb, and frankly, he couldn’t believe they were capable of speaking, let alone criticizing Tristan of all people.

Instead of slaying by reply, or by knife, Tristan merely grunted and slapped a hand on his horse’s flanks. That sent Galahad past worry and well into terror, but—nothing he could do except ride, and ride, and ride.

They pounded up and into the clear path that the legionaries had opened in the middle of the ranks, racing arrows and time all the way. And then they were sawing at the reins, trying to turn aside their lathered, hysterical, exhausted chargers before they rammed themselves into the Roman artillery at the back of the legion. The ropes of one ballista were so near to Galahad when he passed it that they seemed to burn through the air and scorch his cheek. In the end, they didn’t manage to halt until well past the lines of battle and nearly to the top of the hill, a few hundred yards from the camp.

The moment they ceased to move, all the fatigue and hurts leaped into prominence. Galahad’s horse was pitifully hanging its head between its legs, croaking for air, sides heaving so hard that they bounced his feet. He didn’t feel much better, but he still forced himself to dismount and help first Gawain, then Tristan get down.

As they’d stayed to wait for Arthur and Lancelot, they were among the last to arrive; the surgeons weren’t going to come out till battle’s end, but someone had already sent to camp and gotten medical supplies. The knights had become used to taking care of their own, after all. Galahad grabbed everything that he could get and hurried back to the other two.

Tristan had laid down on his back and looked almost to be sleeping, save for the drawn lines around his bloodless mouth. On the other hand, Gawain had apparently gone feverish and was now sitting, now standing as he tried to make out the continuing fighting. “It looks like we’re winning.”

“Winning what?” Galahad snapped. He was disgusted to hear tears in his voice, and even more so to find his hands trembling too much to do anything useful. A few deep breaths, a mental lashing, and he steadied enough to start peeling the armor and leather from the bloodiest patches on Tristan.

“You’ll have to cut those loose.” Tristan still hadn’t opened his eyes.

Galahad swallowed again, even though his mouth was parched and he could’ve used the spit. “I _know_ that.”

“They’re all dying. Look at them,” Gawain said. He sounded as if he were miles away. “All those Woads.”

“Wonderful. It worked.” The words tasted like ashes on Galahad’s tongue, gritty cinders getting stuck in his teeth. He remembered one afternoon when juicy bloody deer meat had done the same, and Tristan had mocked him for it. And in that annoying, familiar, back-handed way of his, warned Galahad to be careful, to not give them all away. Tristan was always there, watching out for danger and meeting it, and Gawain was too, smoothing things over when they stole a bit of peace. Galahad couldn’t imagine a life without the pair of them, just as now he couldn’t quite see how he was picking out the bits of shredded leather from Tristan’s oozing wound.

Something in the air shifted—Gawain’s scent went flat and dull. Barely in time, Galahad dropped the probe and tweezers to catch the collapsing man. But Gawain weighed a little too much more than Galahad, who was dead tired anyway, and so the best that could be done was to ease Gawain’s fall to the grass.

“I didn’t think a broken arm would be this bad,” Gawain murmured, surprised eyes flickering unfocused over Galahad’s face.

“There’s more than just that.” Had to get back to work, Galahad told himself. Had to clean and stitch Tristan’s wounds, had to set Gawain’s arm and see what else was turning Gawain the color of snow. Had to, had to, had to. So much to do, and only him.

A tiny dot in the sky swirled, then streaked down and large to become a hawk alighting by Tristan. He opened his eyes then, wan smile on his face, and stretched out his hand to stroke its head, smoothing its feathers.

For Galahad, watching it was like feeling himself being stroked back into calm. He was a Sarmatian knight. More than that—he was one who could go on four legs as well as two, and only those had survived this long. He could handle this.

With sure hands, he took up the surgical instruments and re-addressed himself to Tristan’s injuries. Gawain could wait for a little while. Not long, but Galahad could be that quick and good when he had to be. He’d had good teachers.

* * *

“He’s not dead.” Arthur was sitting by Lancelot’s cot, but he was looking out the tent flap at the merciless black of the night. “Merlin survived today. I can feel it.”

“He wouldn’t have if I have been a little faster.” Disappointment and hatreds of several kinds acidly bit at Lancelot, pooling like poison beneath his tongue. “I wanted to bring you his head as a gift.”

That startled Arthur. Enough for him to finally turn and look Lancelot in the eye, as he hadn’t done since he had glared the terrified surgeon into doing the best work of his pathetic life, then sat himself in the corner to watch. “I never asked you to do that.”

“No, you didn’t.” And he never would have, even though the thought of living Merlin was eating Arthur alive. Chewing up his reason and replacing it with a terribly jealous kind of dedication that brooked no competitors for Arthur’s attention.

In the beginning, Lancelot had understood. Revenge was something that rang true to him, and revenge of a parent? Well, his had thrown him out—but they had loved him first for twelve years, and he still remembered what that feeling was like. He remembered that in the years between that event and now, he’d never found its like, though he had thought he’d found something that surpassed it like the sun’s brilliance surpassed the moon’s. And then he had started to realize just what Arthur’s enmity with Merlin was putting at risk.

“He was going to kill you because of me,” Arthur said. His hands unconsciously curled into fists on his knees, and his body hunched away from everything in the room, including Lancelot. “That man…sometimes I wonder if he is a sorcerer. He seems to know a great deal about me.”

“Well, you’re responsible for the deaths of many of his people. He’d be a poor leader if he didn’t try to learn about you.” Lancelot’s body protested with agonizing shocks, but he forced it upright. His vision swam with black streaks, and he had to pause a moment to catch his breath. “I wanted to spare you his blood on your hands. You already brood enough on them as it is.”

Air hissed through Arthur’s teeth, low and ragged, and the half of his eye that Lancelot could see glittered with steel anger. “He almost killed you. He didn’t, thank God, but—five more seconds.”

“I—”

“Do you even _understand_ how close I came to—to—” Arthur suddenly, violently, jerked around and seized Lancelot by the shoulders, flexing fingers till the bones in Lancelot’s shoulders screamed with pain. “I told you once: if you were to die—”

Lancelot’s breath caught high in his throat, squeezing his voice into a fearful thin thing that he hadn’t produced since boyhood. “You’re frightening me now. And back on the field—Arthur, that’s what Merlin does to you. That’s what Rome does to you. That’s what I didn’t want to see you become.”

“No, that’s what _you_ do to me. I know I can’t protect you from the world. You’d kill me yourself.” A mirthless, ironic smile momentarily slipped over Arthur’s face, doing nothing to lighten the darkness there. “But I won’t see you die for me.”

“Too late for that,” Lancelot muttered. And he was strangely content with his decision. Arthur was reason enough to die—but he was also reason enough to live, and Lancelot supposed that that was why he didn’t hate Arthur for being the constant chink in his armor. For overshadowing Sarmatia and Rome and Britain and every other place that had left its marks on him.

Whatever gods watched over men like them had to be laughing, because Lancelot knew he wasn’t going to have Arthur forever, and yet he willingly continued to throw himself after the other man. Fifteen years…and of that, nine had already passed. If all he had was six, then he was going to be as jealous of that time as anything else was. Christianity and Rome could wait. Merlin, however, couldn’t.

Lancelot wrapped his hand around Arthur’s wrist and gently tugged the other man onto the bed. “Most men would be honored by that kind of sacrifice, you know.”

“Your arrogance never ceases to amaze me. And I’ve long since given up trying to understand your complete—complete obliviousness.” Arthur abruptly took Lancelot’s face between his palms and pressed their foreheads together. He was slumping with an exhaustion that was more than physical, and yet something hot and ferocious and undying still struggled to free itself from him. “I don’t want your sacrifice. I want your life. I want you to live, damn it. That’s what would make my life meaningful.”

“What about your God and your city?” As soon as the words had left Lancelot’s mouth, he wished they had never seen birth.

Stiffening, Arthur slowly withdrew from him, and the loss stole all the warmth from Lancelot. He shivered and grabbed at Arthur, but that jarred his rib and the resulting pain clawed out a cry from him.

Arthur froze in place. Then, even more slowly, he sat back down on the edge of the bed and cradled Lancelot against his chest. A few minutes later, he finally started to relax, dipping down to nuzzle the side of Lancelot’s face and throat. “You’re going to be the death of me,” he sighed.

“Then we’re even.” Lancelot swallowed hard and tried to enjoy the moment, because those of its kind were getting rarer and rarer. He lifted his head and pressed his lips to Arthur’s, then ducked down again and pretended that he hadn’t tasted the ashes there.

* * *

“…and the third one’s already putting up a fight in Vanora’s belly,” Bors proudly said. He scratched at his grin with a handful of blood-grimed nails, benevolent chuckles dripping down his filthy front. “I’m thinking it’ll be a boy again.”

“Keep going and you’ll have your own pack soon. You can set them at the nearest rabbits,” Galahad snorted. He ducked Bors’ cuff and went right on fussing with Gawain’s bandages. “Hand me that splint, would you?”

Eyes rolling, Gawain snatched it first and used it to prod Bors away, then surrendered it to Galahad. “This time get it right, would you? Unless you think I like having my arm reset.”

“If you hadn’t wrecked the first splint because you wanted to help carry Tristan, we wouldn’t be doing this again.” Righteousness was disturbingly at home on Galahad’s face. So was smugness, which came forth as he stepped back to make way for the surgeon.

 _Snapclick_ \--fuck. _Fuck_.

When the black spots in Gawain’s sight stopped dawdling with the bright ones, he refocused on Galahad and Bors’ idle chatter, which was a loud, useful distraction from whatever witchery the surgeon was up to. Gawain had never liked surgeons, and every time he had to submit to one, his repulsion towards them only got worse.

“So—I always forget to ask,” Galahad said, switching to his native dialect. The Roman surgeon threw a mildly curious glance at him, but clearly didn’t understand a thing and soon returned to binding Gawain’s arm. “Bors. You ever tell Vanora?”

Bors grew quieter and serious as he nodded, and he didn’t actually speak for a long while. When he finally did, it was very slowly, as if he was having problems remembering his homeland’s language. “I did. And she didn’t…well, she stared for a while, and then she laughed, like it wasn’t much of a surprise. Hasn’t given me any trouble about _that_ since, though she made me promise to teach them about it myself.”

“Well, you have a while. Doesn’t start till twelve, at least.” Galahad snickered a bit; his voice was strained, Gawain suddenly noticed. And there was an unhealthy gray tinge to Galahad’s tanned skin, and deep lines around his mouth and nose that hadn’t been present at the start of the day. “Better pray for girls so you don’t have to do as much.”

“Girls or boys, it’s hard work getting them. Hard but worth the while.” A lascivious wink on Bors was like a flower garland on a dungheap. It was terrifically hard not to laugh at the sheer incongruity of it all, but Gawain somehow managed it.

The surgeon yanked on the bandages one last time, then tied them off while Gawain struggled to stop his eyes from watering with the pain. He muttered something in response to Galahad’s grudging thanks and staggered out, obviously worn near to breaking by the night. It’d been a complete Roman victory in terms of casualties and goals accomplished, but no aftermath was ever kind to the survivors, no matter what their side.

“Well, I’m for my tent, unless you need me to haul around someone,” Bors muttered, face suddenly drawn with fatigue. When Galahad shook his head, Bors absently flapped a hand in farewell and ducked out the front.

As Galahad did up the lacings of the tent-flap, taking twice as long as usual because of his tiredness, Gawain maneuvered himself to lie the other way, facing Tristan. “You’re not asleep.”

“No, but I was close.” Tristan had eyelashes like a girl’s, long and thick and surprisingly delicate, considering the man’s nature. Quiet, violent, and unashamed about it. Gawain wondered if Tristan had ever regretted anything in his life, and then he wondered if that was a happy way to live.

“Can we just leave everything till morning?” Galahad broke in. Done with the tent lacings, he was finally attending to himself. When the armor began to drop from his body, Gawain stared. When Galahad started rinsing himself with the same bloody water he’d used to clean Gawain and Tristan, Gawain realized that he was staring.

A low laugh from the side returned his attention to Tristan, who still hadn’t opened his eyes. In the far corner, perched on a chair, his dozing hawk ruffled up, then smoothed down its feathers. “Grown up.”

“And wonder of wonders, you’re still a bastard.” As Galahad finished his washing, he threw repeated nasty looks at Tristan, which somewhat reassured the queasiness in Gawain’s stomach. The world had always been changing and always would, but the least it could do was keep to a constant rate instead of jerking about in random bursts.

“Better kisser than Gawain, though,” Galahad added, and the bottom of Gawain’s stomach dropped out from under him. He’d lost count of the number of times it’d done that since dawn, but he certainly hadn’t forgotten the vivid nausea that accompanied it.

Tristan opened his eyes, lifted his head and blankly stared at Galahad. Gawain wondered why that expression made him want to shove his face in Tristan’s neck and lick. Maybe it was the uncharacteristic uncertainty, which for some reason was quite appealing.

Galahad let out a contemptuous snort and plopped onto the side of Gawain’s cot, which jarred many things, none of which particularly enjoyed the sudden motion. “Ow!”

“Sorry.” Though Galahad appeared to be no such thing as he met Tristan’s gaze. “What? It’s not like I could get around you.”

“You don’t like me at all,” Tristan replied. He still hadn’t blinked.

Galahad emitted a sound that most closely resembled the bastard child of a groan and a grumble. Rather too dramatically, he flopped down and curled into Gawain’s least-pained side, then belatedly muttered an apology for jouncing the cot once again. The bed really wasn’t big enough for three men, but Gawain had the feeling that Galahad would pass out if he moved around any more. “As far as I can tell, liking doesn’t really have much to do with it. Look at Arthur and Lancelot.”

“What are you two talking about?” Gawain demanded, by now thoroughly confused.

“Just the fact that when you two came too damned near to dying on me today, I almost killed you both anyway because—because—oh, forget it.” Still looking annoyed, Galahad levered himself up, slid his fingers into Gawain’s hair, and then proceeded to reenact the morning’s pre-battle events.

This time, however, Gawain was slightly less surprised. It probably helped that he was too tired and in pain to truly realize what he was doing when he sat up, wrapped his good arm around Galahad’s back and sucked the wind out of Galahad’s earlier insult. By the time they broke apart, Galahad was more than a little breathless and had a very lovely flush in his cheeks.

“I’m trying to sleep,” Tristan grumbled.

Galahad gave Gawain a very serious look. “If you don’t shut him up, I will.”

And Gawain’s mind still hadn’t caught up with the world, because he somehow managed to mistake that as a challenge. Not being one to turn down such things, he twisted around and did as Galahad suggested.

Oh. So that was what shock looked like on Tristan—and then the balance flipped and Gawain was whimpering, clinging as a tongue skillfully rendered him into a mass of boneless heat. He tried to drag himself closer and consequently bumped his splint. “Ow! Fuck!”

“Great. We’re finally all in agreement, and you two idiots have to get yourselves half-killed.” Though Galahad’s acerbic tone was as sharp as a glass shard, he betrayed a fast-rising sleepiness when he spoke. “So much for a warrior’s comfort.”

“Do you or do you not want to live to see dawn tomorrow, you ungrateful brat?” Gawain demanded, slowly flipping around to find…a drowsing Galahad, hand curled just beneath his chin. Sighing, Gawain gave up and laid down, gingerly adjusting himself to fit between Galahad and Tristan. Someday it would all make sense. He hoped.

As if reading Gawain’s thoughts, Tristan chuckled and nestled closer. “Try not to think about it. Then it doesn’t hurt as much.”

* * *

Though he was still reeling from the injuries that knight Lancelot had given him, Merlin forced away the healers as soon as he was able. Then he sought out the few wounded that had survived the retreat, and spoke to them. And after that, he struggled up and down the lines of bodies that they had brought with them, knowing that any found by Roman soldiers would be subjected to such indignities that their spirits would never forgive their descendents for a thousand years. It was hard agony, even with the help of his staff, but he did it. And he thought.

Arthur. Artorius Castus. Sarmatian by father, Briton by mother, Roman by choice. A true general, even though it remained to be seen what he was like without the constraints of rank and deference forced upon him. A worthy enemy. And one that carried a deep well of fury within him, no matter how well he hid it. Merlin had seen into the man’s eyes; it would be never before Arthur forgave him for almost killing his best knight.

It made Merlin wonder what that first wrong between them had been—what unforgotten event had roared from the backs of Arthur’s eyes the first time they had met as equals, two years before by the river.

Not that that mattered, aside from satisfying a whim of curiosity. Whatever the causes, the effects were apparent enough, and of more immediate concern. Arthur would never leave Britain until he felt his duty was discharged, and it wouldn’t be until one of them were dead. Although Merlin had a feeling that Arthur did not yet understand that.

The barest rustle betrayed another’s presence. Merlin straightened himself, though it cost blood and breath to do so, and waited.

A few moments later, a runner emerged from the brush and knelt at the edge of the clearing. Despite his reverent fear, he couldn’t help sneaking horrified glances at the corpses.

“You’re to go north, to Guinevere. Take her aside where no one else will hear and tell her of what happened today,” Merlin said. His vision wavered with the effort, but his voice didn’t suffer the slightest tremble. “Tell her of what _happened_ , and not what you wished to have happened. Do not try to make a fool of me. Or of her, because she will know if you lie.”

The runner nodded and began to rise, but Merlin waved him back down.

“You saw the knight they call Arthur, and the one they call Lancelot?” When the man silently assented, Merlin inclined his head in curt approval. “Tell her of them as well. Of both of them.”


	5. Woods

Ten years in Britain wasting blood on a soil that didn’t want them, and now all the hopes of the knights were penned up in a swaying, jouncing carriage bumping along in the midst of some nervous legionaries. That bishop must have been ruing whatever had gotten him sent to such a forsaken land. When he wasn’t vomiting, that was. “Sicker than Bors after a barrel of beer and a night with Vanora, I’d wager,” Lancelot muttered.

“Sorry, were you saying something? Something about my always having woman and drink to come home to, and you not?” Bors instantly called back. He was sitting on the far end of the line, anchoring that end as Lancelot did the other.

And a sorry line it was—seven including Arthur. Lancelot had kept count of the burials up until that one battle in his fourth year of Britain, when Merlin hadn’t quite killed him but had managed to help kill forty knights on the battlefield. Gangrene and fever had taken more knights in the days following that battle, and Lancelot consequently had lost his taste for accurate accounting. Numbers didn’t even begin to describe the losses they’d sustained, after all, and numbers weren’t any comfort either when he had to face yet another burial. Or when he woke in the middle of the night and remembered just how many knights had never even had the simple dignity of a grave.

One thing that had changed after that battle—both Romans and Woads had given up on straightforward fighting. The Britons probably had done that because they’d finally realized that they simply couldn’t match the Romans head-on, but the Romans had gone with that decision solely because of one man.

Arthur sat easy and relaxed next to Lancelot, a rare expression of satisfaction on his face. Usually he hunched with furrowed brow over this map or that trail-trace Tristan had found, brooding on how to out-smart the Woads. He’d turned himself into quite the expert on guerilla hunting, and had virtually taken over command of the garrison, even though a few higher-ranking officers still lingered for various reasons. Once, on an exceptionally calm night, Tristan had mentioned that the Woads now spoke of Arthur in the same breath as their gods of the underworld. That had made Lancelot laugh till the bitterness had risen to choke him off.

“Didn’t say a thing,” he replied to Bors, a trace of that same laugh staining his words. “Nothing except how much I’m looking forward to greeting Vanora when we get back. Got to say hello to all my—I mean, your brats.”

Galahad leaned over and buried his head in his hands. “I pulled them apart last time. It’s someone else’s turn.”

Snickering, Gawain clapped him on the back, then casually dragged his fingers through Galahad’s hair as he dropped his arm. As the knights had fallen, so the remaining ones had circled closer and closer together, to the point that sometimes they might as well have been living in each others’ heads. It was something of a relief to not have to hide their true natures from quite so many people—though it wasn’t nearly enough to make up for all the deaths. “Oh, they won’t bother this time. Not when our discharges are right there, plodding towards us. Even Lancelot’s not stupid enough to get himself killed before he’s free.”

“I never understand why everyone thinks I would lose,” Lancelot snorted, smacking at Gawain. “It’s not as if I haven’t beaten you all so badly that you cried for your mothers.”

“Don’t start, because I’m not taking the bait.” Gawain blocked the half-hearted blows and nudged his horse nearer to Galahad’s.

Arthur suddenly stiffened, as did Tristan. “Not you, but it does seem as if the Woads aren’t nearly as happy as we are.”

Frowning, Lancelot turned his attention back to the bishop’s carriage just in time to see the first Woads lunge out from the ditch that paralleled the road. More followed until the frenzied Britons were swarming as thick as the fleas of an abandoned hound over the beleaguered legionaries, their bloody weapons flashing through the air.

“You’d think they would want us to go,” Galahad said. “Looks like we’ve killed so many that they’re robbing cradles—that one there can’t be more than fifteen or so.”

Before Arthur even looked at them, they were already preparing for the coming fight. Lancelot lifted his hands from their resting place on the saddle horn and flexed his fingers till the knuckles cracked. “Well—”

“Knights?” Arthur reached behind himself and drew out Excalibur.

“—haven’t killed any Britons yet today. I should do something about that.” Lancelot took the reins in one hand and directed his horse into a gallop, then pulled out his own sword. A second later, it cut into the first skull.

Like every other Woad ambush, it was quick and nasty, but ultimately lacking in staying power. Hack, hack, then dismount and fall into the familiar rhythm of defeating death for a few more seconds on earth. Someday Lancelot was going to lose that war, but considering the caliber of his current opponents, that wasn’t going to happen today. He had barely settled himself into the flow of the fighting when it all came to an end, Woads vanishing as swiftly as they came while the knights stood in sticky blood and tried not to lose themselves in the rich stench of it.

“God help us,” gasped someone. A priest, cringing beneath the carriage like a fear-frozen rabbit, long pale throat ready for wringing.

Eyes still lit with the fight, Bors set one gory hand against a wheel rim for support and bared his teeth at the cassock-shrouded fool. “Blue demons that eat Christians. You aren’t a Christian, are you?”

The laugh that slipped out of Lancelot was dark and pitiless, but it helped calm the seething fury within him. He wiped his swords off on a corpse’s rags and sheathed them, then took Bors by one shoulder and dragged him back to Dagonet. “We’re supposed to be nice to them, remember?”

“Don’t see why. The bishop’s dead,” snapped Galahad, voice lashed with disappointment so intense it bordered on rage. He had wrenched open the carriage door and was glaring at the arrow-riddled body inside as if he could raise it back to life by the force of sheer anger.

“That’s not him.” Arthur rode by, barely sparing a glance for the body as he pulled up beside the centurion leading the carriage’s guard detachment. With that gray-streaked beard and those experience-shrewd eyes, the man looked rather too old to be still waving a sword about. “Bishop Germanius. I see your military background’s still useful.”

The centurion’s stern face abruptly cracked into a broad but faintly oily grin. “Arthur. It’s been long years since last I saw you, has it not?”

Interestingly enough, Arthur’s welcome seemed a little less than warm due to a strange preoccupation. He kept flicking his eyes toward the trees as if distracted by something in there, and old vengeance stirred beneath his polite façade every time he looked away. “Yes, it has. I trust you’ll accept us as a replacement escort for the last leg of your journey?”

Of course, Germanius accepted and immediately monopolized Arthur’s attention during the ride back to the garrison, which thus left Lancelot with a foul taste in his mouth despite the golden promise of his discharge. He hadn’t given in so far to the allure of blind hatred to forget that Sarmatia had only been a little more welcoming than Britain, and when he cared to admit it, he also remembered that the whole issue of his fulfilling his term of service to Rome was a poor second in comparison to the real dilemma in his life. Sarmatia was far away both in time and in distance, and so it made a lovely, convenient illusion of paradise. Distracted him well enough from the agonizing realization that he was losing his true dream to prayers and notions of equality among men.

“When I get home, the first thing I’ll do is find a lovely Sarmatian woman and settle down,” Gawain was saying, playful and teasing. The battle-rage in his eyes had long since transmuted itself to lust that divided itself between Tristan, who never seemed to change his expression these days, and Galahad, who kept taking impatient glances at the bishop riding ahead.

“Then I expect I’ll be spending a lot of time at your house,” Lancelot said, rousing himself out of his black mood. Time enough for that later. Right now, he wanted the sun on his face and the pretense of a happy ending. “Your wife will welcome the company.”

Eyebrow raised, Gawain turned and gleefully plunged into the farce. “I see. And what will I be doing?”

“Wondering at your good fortune that all your children look like me.” As if Lancelot ever planned to be responsible for any child suffering what he had suffered. Though he occasionally did look at Bors’ fertile contentment and think a little.

“Is that before or after I hit you with my ax?” Gawain mockingly raised the weapon in question.

A sharp snort of contempt from Galahad drew both their attention. “Don’t joke about it. I want off this damned island—if I have to stay another day, I think I’ll go mad. And I don’t care if back in Sarmatia they still try to kill me. At least it’ll be my own people.”

He’d spoken what they were all thinking, and his words resonated too loudly in the uncomfortable silence that followed. And they reminded Lancelot once again that Arthur’s people and his were not the same. The way Arthur was now, he was going to flee for the false, _safe_ comforts of his adopted city—just as Lancelot was looking forward to running to ground in Sarmatia. It would figure that war would make him furious, but peace would make him sick.

“Bors, what about your children?” Dagonet asked. Now there was a calm that rivaled Tristan’s; Lancelot sometimes thought he should ask Arthur just how that knight had come into the fold, but then, he wanted to ask Arthur so many questions that when a moment came up, he could never manage to pick one in time.

“Trying to avoid that decision, actually.” Bors’ chuckle was a little short on mirth. “Think getting killed would work?”

Everyone looked at each other. “No,” they chorused.

“Damn.” Mournful was an odd emotion to see on Bors. “They’re too young to make it in Sarmatia. Haven’t even started to shift skins yet.”

Tristan lifted his hawk and kissed its head, murmuring little secrets to its gleaming eyes. “Think on it when you’re a free man. Things will change then, so there’s no point in deciding now.”

And his words rang so true that they let him have the last word.

* * *

Arthur attempted to subtly catch Germanius’ attention with every kind of gesture known to man. He tried to divert their conversation. He tried to _interrupt_ their conversation. In the end, however, none of those approaches worked, and the only untried attack was the very one he’d desperately wanted to avoid.

“A…round table,” Germanius said, voice slowed with patent disapproval.

“Yes. So no one place is favored above another. We’re all equal here.” The grating emphasis Arthur put on that did not go unnoticed by Germanius, which was exactly as Arthur intended. “And looking forward to the—”

Germanius coughed, heavy vestments rustling with all the weight of ominous premonition. He stepped up and whispered, “Arthur, if you please. I need to speak to you alone.”

Dread filled Arthur’s mouth with the taste of ashes, but he spoke strongly enough. “Whatever you need to say can be said to all.”

Lancelot was smiling, those white teeth flashing with merciless foreknowledge and accusing resignation. Whenever Arthur saw the man these days, that expression was ever-present, doing much to nurture the guilt that snaked tendrils through every part of Arthur.

“I don’t think it can.” This time, Germanius spoke to be heard by everyone, and to remind them that he was a man whose life had been as hardened by warfare as their own. He would brook no disagreement.

Arthur’s decision only added to the clawing demons in his gut, but he at last dismissed the knights, ignoring not only Lancelot’s intense scrutiny but also Tristan’s uncharacteristically public display of mockery in his farewell toast. And then, winter tightening its grip on him, he listened to Germanius speak of a Roman family trapped north of Hadrian’s Wall, of a boy the Church wanted home to blood the political mill, of a last mission as blood-price for the discharges. He argued and protested till his voice rasped with overuse, all to no avail as Germanius countered with calls to duty, faith and debt, for the bishop had been the one to sponsor the parentless boy-Arthur through his rise up the army ranks.

Germanius probably didn’t realize how near he came to having his throat ripped out, Arthur thought as he dragged his beaten self towards the tavern. If he ever did, it was extremely doubtful whether he’d recognize the honor inherent in that; only one other man had ever managed to push Arthur that far.

The anger surged back to the forefront of Arthur’s mind, and he had to duck into an alley and press his fists against the wall, breathing so slowly that his vision began to black out. He couldn’t do this. Not only did it contravene everything he believed in, all the ideals that had supported his sanity through the preceding years of constant savage darkness, but it also went against everything he’d come to love.

But there were innocent lives at stake, and possibly the future of the entire Church. Weighed against the lives of his knights, and Arthur doubted that even Solomon had ever been faced with a harder decision.

Thanks to his dual—if indeed he could only claim two, snorted his self-contempt—nature, Arthur could make out the individual voices of his men, all full of a joyous camaraderie that was rare enough in places of peace and wealth where men had all their wants satisfied, let alone in the never-ending mess that was Britain.

Gawain: “How do you do that, Tristan?”

Tristan: “I aim for the middle.”

And irrepressible Lancelot, who somehow withstood all the wrongs that Arthur undeservedly heaped on him. “Vanora, when are you going to leave Bors and come home with me?”

“My lover’s watching. And yours has a working nose,” hissed Vanora.

“You look nothing like him.” Empathetically told to the baby’s gurgles, and then, to the whole tavern, Bors’ bellow: “Give us a song!”

Vanora had a sweet voice, but tonight it was in especially fine form, soaring high and beautiful where only dreams could go. Hearkening to it, Arthur lost himself in the simple pleasure of it, and only too late noticed that he’d wandered to where he could be noticed.

And after all this time, Lancelot’s face would still light up, stirring feelings within Arthur that should’ve been long since lost to dishonor. “And here’s our leader, lately come from the good bishop. How’d it go?”

They were good men, great warriors and superior spirits. They’d risked excruciating death again and again for Arthur, they’d listened to his words and taken those into themselves. They were the best judges, so he would lay out the situation before them and let them decide.

When they all chose for him, however reluctantly, the shock was great enough to numb him until he reached the stables. It even lasted until his hands had touched his saddle, where one of his fingers slipped and jabbed itself on a jagged bit of metal, lacerating his senses back into him.

“Oh, God.” Arthur wanted to fall through the earth. The leaden responsibilities that chained his limbs certainly should have been heavy enough.

As if he should have expected otherwise, said that sardonic particle of irony that haunted his every thought, always using Lancelot’s voice. He’d already known that they couldn’t disagree with him. Not when they’d spent the past fifteen years relying on his judgment and protection and leadership. Not when they’d dedicated themselves to him-- _him_ , and not Rome or war or religion or even philosophical utopias. They were wolves, and he led them.

“God,” Arthur repeated, closing his eyes so the world wouldn’t see the rot within him. “Preserve the lives of my knights. But if you must take a life, then take mine.”

“Why do you always talk to him and not to me?” The voice was too loud, too crackling with life. It took Arthur a moment to realize that he was hearing the flesh-and-blood Lancelot and not the bodiless pretender that lurked in his mind. “Does he ever answer you?”

Sighing, Arthur turned around and opened his eyes to see Lancelot standing with clenched fists, fury bound up tightly in his unwavering gaze. “We’ve been over this. You have your beliefs and I have mine.”

“I don’t trust anything that puts a man on his knees,” Lancelot snapped. “If such a powerful god is so jealous as to demand constant humiliation, then I say—”

“Don’t! Don’t—Lancelot, for the love of whatever friendship we still have. Don’t do this.” Damn the man. It never ceased to surprise Arthur how quickly Lancelot could rouse the rage in him. Nor did either of them ever seem to learn from their previous clashes; instead, they always ended up walking away with a belly full of resentment and a new set of marks to overlay the old ones, which were never completely erased.

When Lancelot didn’t immediately answer, Arthur turned back to his tack. He was about to start filling his saddlebags when a hand seized his arm.

“There was a time when you would’ve taken an afternoon with me over a half-hour reading, or kneeling to your crosses.” Lancelot’s voice was low as ebb tide under a new moon, and smoky with heat.

Arthur froze, silently cursing himself for forgetting the other emotion that always came forth to Lancelot’s call. He told himself to speak up before matters could grow even worse, but that hand on his arm slid down to cover his fingers, which were clamped around the railing. Leanness pressed into his side, instantly recalling and outdoing all the memories of happier times.

“You seemed to like Sarmatia, I remember.” As Lancelot was resting his chin on Arthur’s shoulder, every word vibrated down into the bone and floated caressingly over Arthur’s ear. “Would you have left if we hadn’t been posted here?”

“It’s not my land,” Arthur murmured, struggling not to press back against Lancelot. “It never was, though I found it pleasant for a while. It’s your home.”

Lancelot rubbed his cheek against Arthur’s shoulderblade, laughing so softly his sarcasm was nearly masked. “Only until I was twelve. Then it didn’t seem to welcome me too much.”

“Then why are you so desperate to return?” Confusion was wriggling into the cracks in Arthur’s determination, slowly prying them wide for foolish surrender.

“It’s not _Sarmatia_ , idiot. It’s what Sarmatia means—no Rome. No overlord. But also…damn it. You make it so difficult to talk about the simplest little things.” Frustrated, Lancelot beat his forehead against Arthur’s arm. Then he stilled and slumped, every line of his body bespeaking a defeat that frightened Arthur on levels he hadn’t realized he’d had. “You know, the stupidest thing about this is that part of me is actually happy. Because this way, it’ll be a little longer before you leave me.”

Arthur swallowed twice before he gave up on ridding himself of the lump in his throat. It refused to budge, which forced his breath to pool in the back of his mouth and stagnate. “I keep telling you to visit me in Rome. The arts and the learning that’s gathered there…”

When Lancelot lifted his head, he revealed the eyes of a dying man, though his vigor was struggling till the end. The corner of his mouth lifted in listless humor. “But what of the women?”

“You aren’t interested in the women,” Arthur finally admitted, voice rough. So were his palms on their inevitable slide to Lancelot’s waist.

“You aren’t Roman,” Lancelot countered as he swayed nearer. “At least, not the part of you that wants me.”

His lips were like a brand on Arthur, searing and sweet and lingering. “I don’t only want you,” Arthur told them, just before they ran out of time for words.

He took Lancelot up against a pole, drowning himself in sweat-softened curls, sweet yielding flesh, fingers bruising his shoulders. Horses nickering, earthy fragrance from the hay being crushed by their feet, vulnerable pulse of Lancelot’s bared throat beating against Arthur’s mouth. And for a little while afterward, the feeling that Arthur had finally earned the right of it.

* * *

Tristan found Galahad sitting on a roof, slicing up an apple and stabbing the pieces into his mouth. With the way the name ‘Gawain’ kept recurring in his mutterings, it would’ve been easy to assume that he was imagining the bits of fruit to be the other man. But after six years of putting up with Galahad’s restlessness, Tristan knew better.

“Where’s your hawk?” Galahad called down. He unconsciously curled away from Tristan as he did.

“I left her with Gawain. He needed something to do besides fretting over you.” Naturally, Tristan’s response was to advance; it was the matter of a moment to catch the roof-edge with his hand, a window-sill with his boot-tip, and to swing himself up. He settled down a few feet from Galahad and started to attend to his knives.

It took a few minutes longer than usual for Galahad to complain. Tristan noted that and accordingly adjusted his assessment of the other man’s state of aggravation. “Don’t you ever do anything different? It’s either hone those damn things, pet the hawk or run around the forest and make Ga—make that bastard fidget till you finally show up.”

The afternoon’s fight had left its mark in the form of a chip in one of Tristan’s best long knives. Though it wasn’t too deep, and with any luck…Tristan carefully filed down the edges of the notch.

“All right, all right. I won’t kill him.” Galahad spat out an apple seed that rattled a roof tile of the building next door. “But since when did he have the fucking right to speak for me? I’m nowhere near being a boy now, even blind as he is to that kind of thing.”

“Were you going to tell Arthur no?” While Tristan waited for Galahad to not answer him, he finished smoothing the edge of his blade. A few last finicky swipes, and then he moved onto the next one. “So Arthur wasn’t going to wait for you forever. Someone had to speak.”

More tiles clinked as Galahad swung his legs over to dangle down the side of the building. He kicked his heels in the air, at first in a vague rhythm, but his movements gradually grew more violent and random as time passed.

“Why are you always so reasonable?” Galahad finally muttered. “Don’t you ever lose your temper?”

That made Tristan think a moment, because he wanted to be sure. “Not in the time that you’ve known me. And I’m reasonable—”

“—because someone has to be—”

“—because I already know that I can’t expect anything. So I don’t lose anything of value by not getting upset.” Tristan checked the sharpness of his last dagger against his thumb, then tucked away blade and whetstone before sucking off the blood. It helped stave off the restiveness he felt every time they were in the garrison and night fell; he’d grown so accustomed to sleeping in temporary shelters that permanent structures had started to bother him a little. Stone and brick walls were too…still.

Which was possibly why he was finding it easier and easier to tolerate Galahad, who never stopped moving. Even Lancelot’s agitation had a kind of directed energy to it that was lacking in Galahad’s impatience.

“Well, that makes me feel a little better. You’ve not grown out of being a fool.” And then Galahad was scooting over and pushing Tristan against the roof without a care towards the possibility of observers.

“Not here.” Tristan dodged, but kept one hand on Galahad’s shoulder so the other man wouldn’t take it as a complete rejection. His overreactions to that always resulted in at least a week of awkwardness, and that was when Gawain was in a position to play the role of intermediary. “Why’d you do that?”

Galahad rolled his eyes, then jumped off the roof. He stretched a hand back up to Tristan. “Because after six years, you should be able to expect something. You’ve got the right so, as Arthur would say.”

“I doubt that,” Tristan snorted. He didn’t need the help, but for some reason, he found himself taking Galahad’s hand anyway as he got down. “Come on. My hawk’s probably winning by now.”

“Gawain’s not that bad with it,” Galahad protested, apparently forgetting that he was supposed to be too angry to defend Gawain.

They walked in relative peace all the way to the door of their barracks, where Galahad stopped, stubborn nervousness blooming in his face. He shuffled the dust around with his feet, suddenly looking fifteen again. “You’re going to make me apologize to him, aren’t you.”

Grinning, Tristan merely clamped a hand on Galahad’s shoulder and dragged him inside.

* * *

Riding up to this Marius Honorius’ villa was either an exercise in sheer bravado, or in sheer stupidity. Given how the night had gone, Gawain was leaning toward the latter choice. The Woads had had them completely trapped, had had the chance to utterly wipe them out where no sympathetic person would ever find their bodies…and then they’d let them go.

And that one Woad, who’d apparently been the leader—Gawain could’ve sworn that that had been the same one whose life Arthur had spared during the attack on Germanius. The strange look on Arthur’s face when he’d confronted the Woad had just about confirmed that guess: it’d been rage, but more of a…reflection or shadow of some other grudge. “Dagonet?”

The other man slightly turned his head, but didn’t speak. Understandably. They were still in deep forest, and Tristan hadn’t yet returned from his last round of scouting.

“You were near Arthur when we were fighting the Woads that ambushed Germanius. Did you see Merlin anywhere near?” Gawain hoped that Tristan would come back soon, because the other man was much better at deciphering Arthur’s various behaviors. Second only to Lancelot, but as Lancelot hadn’t really talked to anyone since they’d left the garrison…

Dagonet shook his head, but his gaze intensified until Gawain could feel his skin begin to prickle. “Why?”

“Oh…well, when Arthur gets…off…it’s almost always because of Lancelot or because of Merlin. And Lancelot’s been quiet lately.” Shrugging, Gawain touched up his horse’s pace a little. If he didn’t have to be last, then he wasn’t going to let himself be; rearguard during a forest probe was always the worst position.

“Too quiet,” Galahad muttered. He shot Gawain a look, as if deciding whether to go on or resume the strained silent truce that had been in effect since they’d first heard about their supposed last mission. “If they got into another fight—”

Gawain flapped his hand, darting worried looks at the aforementioned knights, who were riding ahead. “Then that’s their business, and not ours.”

“It’s mine if it makes a difference in whether I get my discharge.” The inflection on the last word spiked, as if Galahad was trying to stab Gawain with it.

“We’re coming up on the house,” Dagonet interrupted. He clucked at his horse, slowing it so he could back up to Bors and pass on the news, Gawain assumed.

And the path was opening onto a clearing, so quickly that the change was an almost physical shock. Gawain’s vision blurred as it tried to see through gnarled knotwork trunks that were no longer there, then cleared as he adjusted. Up ahead, a proper Roman gate with sculptured posts loomed out of the landscape, incongruous as a flower growing out of a pile of horse-shit.

“One part done. Can’t wait till we get through the rest.” Galahad spurred his charger on.

Gawain wasn’t quite so free with his enthusiasm, let alone his hope. He had a growing twist in his gut that told him matters were going to get much more complicated before the whole mission finally ended.

* * *

It had been a long, long time since Guinevere had smelled anything except the stench of agony-numbed fear and the sick twisted lust that drenched her captors, so when a wave of musky leather and steel curled itself into her nose, she forced herself to look. And her eyes met the horrified dark ones of a man dressed in the armor of the Sarmatian cavalry. “I’m Arthur,” he whispered. “You no longer have to fear.”

And then he reared back, revealing in passing the presence of another man, and with one furious blow knocked the lock from her cage. The thunderous clanging as the bars hit the stone lacerated Guinevere’s hearing, making her duck her head and stop up her ears as best she could with her mangled hands.

She’d forgotten how much her fingers hurt. She’d forgotten how much _pain_ hurt.

When she came to herself again, Guinevere then realized how much she’d also forgotten of the sky and grass and snow and wind. Gasping, she tried to climb out of the arms cradling her, desperate for more free air, more free space, more of everything that wasn’t crushing walls painted with blood that never quite dried for the dampness of cruelty.

“No, no, don’t.” Some rough male voice tried to quiet her frantic whimperings, but she wasn’t going to be denied again. Not when there was dirt forcing itself beneath her ragged nails, bleeding her afresh but with her own soil, and so many _scents_. So much she’d nearly lost. So—

“What do you think you’re doing?” snapped _that_ one. “You’ve no right—”

Guinevere remembered rage then, and humiliation and suffering and pride. She whipped out of the arms that sought to restrain her and snarling, changed. Tried to leap for that white throat’s fatty vulnerability, but her body was too broken. Falling back broke it even more, jarring her back to benumbed legs and shattered hands, and then she cried a little. Because Marius had taken even that from her.

“See! See!” Eyes alight with righteous delight, he stabbed his finger in her direction. “She’s a monster. They’re all monsters here—not even human! They knew and they _reverenced_ her for that!”

“It’s worth more than your God,” that second man sneered, lips pulled back to display long canines. He was standing over Guinevere and had his swords out, while the man holding her was also reaching for his—Arthur. Arthur had her.

For a moment, Guinevere wondered whether today was her time to die.

Then a snarl echoed from behind Marius, low fury trembling the ground. A huge knight was kneeling over Lucan—and then it was a huge wolf crouching over the boy, threat plainly directed at Marius. A blink, and the knight was back, now stroking Lucan’s curls with all the tenderness of a new mother.

The Roman bastard’s eyes bulged. His jaw dropped, slack as a baby’s. “You—Arthur, you—”

“It hardly matters, considering that it’s what’s going to preserve your lives,” Arthur spat, slipping his arms beneath Guinevere and lifting her, easy as a feather. Though when she caught sight of her arm, limp stick across her belly, that didn’t seem surprising at all. “That it’s what has kept the Woads from your doorstep all these years. Get into your wagon and stay there, Marius Honorius.”

Arthur spoke against a tangible back-drop of growling that vibrated from one stony-faced knight to another, churning the frozen air into a slush of feral menace.

“You’re supposed to be protecting us!” Marius darted for his pet guards, but however he moved, he always found a knight casually slipping between him and his dogs. Weak civilized curs that they were, they did nothing except shiver with fear. “Rome will hear of this. She’ll hear of every single scrape you demons give us.”

“We are protecting you, and unless you want to deal with the Saxons, you’ll let us handle that as we see fit.” Icicles snapping beneath their own weight didn’t sound as crisp or cold as Arthur did. He didn’t look at Marius as he handed Guinevere into Fulcinia’s silent shameful sympathy, as he gestured for his knights to remount, as he hauled himself back on his own horse with a face like the dark shadow in a newly-dug grave.

In fact, he more or less ignored Marius throughout the journey, though his knights lost no chance to let slip some small reminder of their feelings towards the Romans. Watching them, Guinevere wondered how they had managed to keep their secrets for so long, because there was no mistaking the wolfishness in them now.

Merlin had hinted of such things, she remembered, and in doing that Guinevere slowly began to recover the parts of herself that had locked themselves away from Christianity’s kind ministrations. She laid on her back, tracking the movements of each shadow on the lashed-down curtains while Fulcinia dressed her wounds, and she slowly recalled what it was like to be Guinevere, and not the caged beast tearing at itself. Then she remembered what she’d been helping to plan before Marius’ men had snatched her from her bed.

The front of the carriage groaned alarmingly, complaining of its sudden increase in burden. Arthur’s haggard face pushed through the curtains; with steps unsteadied by fatigue and worry, he made his way first to Lucan and…Dagonet, some of the other knights had named that one. They had a short conversation, too softly for even Guinevere to make out, and then Fulcinia was folding herself back into the shadows as Arthur knelt by Guinevere’s pallet. His hand, iced on the surface but hot beneath, felt her brow before dropping to her bandaged fingers. She instinctively tried to draw them away, but he took her wrist and held it till she relaxed.

“Your bones are out of your joints,” he told her, frank in his still strong horror at what’d been done to her. Guinevere had to remind herself that it was that and not her herself that disgusted him. “I need to force them back if you ever want to use your hand again.”

Nodding, she forced her hand to lift and let him unwrap it. Then she allowed him to take the dull knobs of frozen ache embedded in each knuckle and burst them into agonizing mobility. It would have been better if she could’ve remained facing him as he did it, but the pain was too much and she fell into him, muffling her cries in his shoulder.

“There.” Once he was finished, he rocked back on his heels and expressionlessly watched as she stared at her able fingers.

A bow, Guinevere thought. Those calluses would fit around it just so—and she curled her hand. The wonder when her fingers bent as they should was too painful for it to be a dream.

“I’ve never met a female one of us,” Arthur said, tone too somber.

“I’m not a Roman,” Guinevere corrected. The rules of this hunt were slowly coming back to her, smoothing oil onto the rusted intelligence of her mind. “But yes, I do change. There aren’t as many women as men here that do, but there are some—is it less equal in Rome?”

Arthur stiffened ever-so-slightly. His scent thickened with uncertainty, turning sour and sharp. Guinevere silently thanked Merlin for making her learn Latin, and then for sending her those fragments hurriedly copied from Pelagius’ essays.

“Romans don’t have this.” With a last searching glance of her face, Arthur began to rise. “Good day, lady.”

“Wait, Artorius Castus.” It sent lightning bolts of hurt from fingertips to shoulder, but Guinevere rose and seized his shoulder. “Sarmatian knight. I am Guinevere, and…thank you.”

The muscle flexing in Arthur’s jaw matched the flicker in his eyes. “I’m not Sarmatian, either. You’re welcome.”

Guinevere watched him leave, then quickly twisted around to put her eye to the small slivered window between carriage frame and drapes. She saw Arthur walk back to his horse, which was being held by that second man that had helped bring her out. Younger than Arthur, with dark eyes that she guessed would have been wickedly lively if not currently veiled with resentment. But when he looked at Arthur—even when they appeared to be violently arguing in whispers—

When he looked at Arthur, he looked as if there was nothing else in the world.

Lancelot.

“What are you thinking, when you watch him?” Fulcinia suddenly asked. Even her questions cringed, afraid of their very existence.

“Why? What do all women think when they see a handsome, brave, honorable man?” Guinevere laid down, cradling her wounded hand. Every so often, she made herself move the fingers so they wouldn’t stiffen into another kind of immobility.

The other woman said nothing, but when she drew the blankets over Guinevere, her fingers hovered over Guinevere’s shoulder as if she wanted to shake it.

“I will not lock myself in another prison,” Guinevere muttered. “I care for no man’s bars, no matter how gilded they might be. Your husband cured me of any inclination towards that.”

It was a harsh thing to say, especially since Fulcinia was trying to make penance, but Guinevere had always detested that part of Christianity anyway. As if doing a good deed would ever truly erase the memory of the evil ones.

Still…Fulcinia couldn’t help her broken nature any more than Guinevere could help her scarred, bent one. Some were simply born without backbones, and some were born too strong to do anything but break all others that they touched.

Something prickled Guinevere’s nose. Startled, she looked out the chink to find Lancelot staring back. He was a good ten feet away, and the gap in the drapes was barely the size of Guinevere’s eye—yet he was looking at her. She could feel that. And she could feel the smolder of his antipathy.

Guinevere abruptly rolled over, letting her one arm flop towards Fulcinia. She closed her eyes and watched the fairytales of her childhood pass one by one across the darkness, pale shadows compared to the world she was relearning. “How is Alecto?”

“Well. He’s never seen your people as evil or flawed—not any more than the rest of humanity.” Eager for the distraction, Fulcinia prattled on about the youth, and Guinevere let her, feeling the shy flow of words tumble and smooth over her as she fell into dream.

* * *

Tristan emerged from the brush just in time to catch the tail-end of Arthur and Guinevere’s conversation. She had made quite the recovery, and was sitting at the front of the carriage, sweet dagger smile on her face. “A leader both Briton and Roman. Yet you chose to hold allegiance to the authority that takes what doesn’t belong to them. That took your men from their lands.”

Well, she knew a surprising amount about them, but she overreached herself in her presumption. Hiding his smile, Tristan waited for Arthur’s response.

“Listen, lady—you know nothing about myself or my men. And you would do well to remember that Britain is not Sarmatia or Rome.” Arthur sat straight and rigid in the saddle, a pose he normally reserved only for the parade-grounds. Which Tristan didn’t believe he’d seen in years.

“How many Britons have you killed?” Guinevere asked. In the forefront of the group, Lancelot was attempting to ignore everything, but Tristan could still make out aborted turns toward Arthur’s direction.

Shrugging, Arthur looked at the path in front of them. “As many as have tried to kill me. It’s the natural state for any man to want to live.”

“Animals live, yet we both know that they and man are quite different. It’s the natural state for a man to want to live in his own country. An animal wouldn’t notice that,” she tartly riposted. “I belong to Britain…and where do you belong, Arthur? You say you’re not Sarmatian, you claim to be Roman…”

“How many did you kill?” Bors asked, riding up to Tristan.

The hawk ruffled, slitting her eyes at the other knight. Tristan slipped her a bit of dried meat from his pack to settle her before he answered. “Four.”

“Not a bad end to the day.” Bors stayed alongside for a few more moments, obviously hoping to hear something before Tristan reported to Arthur, but he was disappointed in that. After an awkward grunt, he dropped back to chat with Dagonet, who was curiously protective of that Woad boy. Tristan momentarily regretted never getting around to learning more about that knight, but then, Dagonet had never been very forward to begin with. And it wasn’t Tristan’s place to question whatever choices the other knights made in regards to their secrets.

“How’s your hand?” Arthur finally asked, not responding to Guinevere’s query.

She lifted the body part in question, slowly moving the fingers. Sore, Tristan suspected, but they would be able to hold a weapon by now. “I’ll live. But there’s nothing in my land that appeals to you? Even your father married a Briton, so he must have found something.”

“And my father died in battle, fighting my mother’s supposed people.” With that, Arthur started to withdraw. He turned his head, saw Tristan and raised an eyebrow, to which Tristan nodded toward the side of the cavaran.

“Battle?” Apparently, Guinevere hadn’t known about that.

Arthur’s smile was hard and double-edged as Excalibur. “It’s a family tradition.”

He rode away before she could throw any more barbs after him, slipping back to join Tristan. “Well?”

“There’s about two hundred Saxons, coming up fast.” And Woads as well, but for once, they weren’t the most pressing worry. “They’ll be on us by tomorrow.”

It was a mark of the strain on Arthur that he swore at that—not in Latin, but in the bitter-voweled dialect of Lancelot’s tribe. Other than that, he did keep his composure intact as he watched the wagons and people trudge through the forest, going scarcely faster than a pregnant cow. “How long before the Saxons make camp for the night?”

“They’re doing that now. But they move fast; they’ll soon make up the difference.” Tristan honestly wished he had had better news, but he didn’t and any kind of lie would only kill them quicker.

“Then it makes no difference. Everyone’s exhausted anyway. Pushing them further tonight would only wear them out for the morning.” Arthur was muttering to himself, gaze flickering over the frost-mossed trunks that loomed over them. He didn’t seem to remember that Tristan was there, which was odd for him.

Two horses trotted up; Gawain and Lancelot, done with their turn at the vanguard. “We’ve got to stop soon,” Gawain said. “They’re starting to drop in their tracks.”

“The next good campsite we see,” Arthur replied. “And we start at first light.”

Then Lancelot caught at the bridle of Arthur’s horse, drawing him aside for…Tristan looked at Gawain. “How many times today?”

“I’m trying not to count anymore. Ask Galahad; he’s practically got his nose shoved up their asses, he’s listening so closely.” Gawain clucked at his horse, gently nudging the tired beast onwards. He flicked his eyes over Tristan, then frowned and reached over to wipe a trace of blood from Tristan’s neck. “If you’re riding around with an unbandaged wound again, I’ll—I’ll tie you out for the Woads to find.”

“The Saxons now,” Tristan corrected, suddenly feeling the long stresses of the day himself. He let himself slump in the saddle and just trailed his horse alongside Gawain’s, allowing the other man to lead for a while.

Dark, bitter irony was a brutal thing to see in Gawain’s face. “Lovely. You know, now I understand why Galahad was so angry at my speaking for him. I probably wouldn’t, if we were going to do that all over again.”

Of course, he was lying. They all were, thinking only of their separate dreams so they needn’t face the coming pain of separation. The years had bound them too tightly together for simple peace, hearth and dutiful wife to so easily replace the warmth of comradeship. Of being together, and striking together, and…bedding together for some of them. Not that that had ever been the only meaning that Gawain held for him.

Tristan was a coward, and he’d acknowledged that fact long ago. But whenever he looked at Gawain, the questions would rise fast and furious in his mouth, and he always started to wonder what it’d be like to be brave in that. To be demanding and selfish and wanting like Lancelot and Galahad, and then to get something for it.

“So…Tristan.” Gawain’s hand ghosted along Tristan’s thigh, bringing him half out of his dark reverie. “What were you planning to do?”

“Follow you.” It must have been the exhaustion. That and the musings on outspokenness, because Tristan had most certainly not meant to say that.

He flinched at his own words, then forced himself to look at Gawain. Surprisingly enough, the other man didn’t seem upset or even very shocked. “Oh. Ah…Tristan…”

“Come on,” Galahad interrupted, riding up. “We found a campsite that’ll actually fit everyone.”

“You know he’ll still be around,” Gawain muttered to Tristan, slow grin like honey on the tongue.

Galahad darted suspicious looks at them both. “Now what?”

“I think I’ll live. He doesn’t have a very strong bite,” Tristan answered, watching with more than a little amusement as a red-faced Galahad promptly hauled his horse around and cantered off.

Just before they entered the makeshift camp, Gawain twisted about and grabbed Tristan’s arm, solemn-faced. His eyes, however, were bright with something that hooked deep into Tristan’s gut and stuck there, burning. “I was joking before about the wife. Someone had to distract Lancelot.”

“I wasn’t joking about what I said.” As Tristan didn’t smell anyone too near, he risked the moment and took Gawain’s hand in his own, then pressed it to his cheek.

“Good. Because I didn’t want you to be.” Gawain’s finger curled around Tristan’s cheekbone, stroking over the twin marks there. Then they both sensed someone coming near and had to break apart, but the unspoken promises still lingered between them.

* * *

Lancelot could understand many things, but why Guinevere would so blatantly flaunt herself before him wasn’t quite one of them. Neither was why he had stopped to watch, and couldn’t lower his eyes no matter how many warnings screamed in his head. Something was wrong here…and besides, he still was of the mind that the knights should leave everyone behind except that damned Alecto. After all, the youth was the only one they’d really come for, and his guardians certainly had lost any hope of deserving a rescue by association. Marius and his perverted faith not only made the bile rise in Lancelot’s throat, but the memories as well: families hunting their sons right into the arms of Rome, just for some stupid folk-fear that hadn’t stood up to the test of time.

After all the years, the knights hadn’t gone into ravening bloody madness. Although sometimes Lancelot could almost see why that would be such an appealing path. Guinevere did recover fast, didn’t she? Only a few days, and already the starved body was developing slim shallow curves, soft fall of hair. On the other hand, Lancelot would have bet his life that the black cunning in those eyes hadn’t ever gone away. Wolf-girl…now he knew why Sarmatian women never seemed to experience that. They were clever, but not of the same shadowy, smoky caliber as Guinevere.

Somewhere in the forest, a twig snapped. It was enough to break whatever spell that Woad girl had woven; Lancelot decisively turned away and stalked after the source of that sound, hiding his burning cheeks in the snow-coated darkness.

It was Arthur, of course. Kneeling in the middle of the damn forest with his sword out of reach and no one to watch his back. The fool…if Lancelot had had a choice, he would’ve picked someone with a better sense of self-preservation.

Except he hadn’t, and even now it didn’t take much for him to admit that he didn’t want a choice. Not with Arthur.

Even when the other man was behaving so oddly—he would fold his hands together and squeeze shut his eyes, but a half-heartbeat later, his eyes would fly open and glare at the world while his arms flung apart as if to tear into an attacker. Then he would slowly raise his head to look at the sky, so anguished that even from the edge of the clearing, Lancelot could feel Arthur’s pain as if it’d traveled across the intervening space to lodge within himself.

“He can’t pray anymore.”

The whisper almost sent Lancelot’s swords stabbing behind him. As it was, he was amazed that Arthur didn’t seem to notice the clatter of metal and leather as he jumped. “Guinevere. How nice to see you well enough to take walks in the middle of the night.”

“One thing the Romans had right—baths make it harder to smell someone coming.” She’d found a pretty flowing dress and cloak somewhere, a bit oversized but still becomingly clingy. “I never thanked you for helping me.”

“You shouldn’t. I argued against that—in fact, I’m still arguing against it.” Lancelot carefully stepped back and leaned against a tree, positioning himself so he could keep an eye on both of them. “And you know something else? I think you must not have done a very good job washing, because I can still smell something on you. _Merlin_.”

Guinevere’s eyebrows went up, and so did the assessing fraction of her gaze. “Likewise, you reek of Arthur.”

That stopped Lancelot for a moment. The other knights knew—they had to by now—but they’d never actually mentioned it, and had always gone along with the ribaldries about whores and camp followers. In fact, the only one who’d ever come close to being as bold as Guinevere had been a drunk knight who hadn’t been one of them…and who’d been unfortunate enough to die in a Woad skirmish the day after.

“How many enemies do you want?” Guinevere whispered. “Marius isn’t beaten yet, believe me—and then there are the Saxons and the Woads who still think it’s better to die fighting than live to see their homeland freed.”

“Are you threatening me?” Incredulous, Lancelot crossed his arms over his chest and made no attempt to hide his contempt.

Possibly a mistake, because that gave her a chance to lean in, her pretty hands searing where they rested on his elbows. “No. I’m…suggesting. And I’ll be honest—all Merlin has tried to do these past few years has been aimed at separating you and Arthur. He knows that if Arthur falls, there won’t be a true leader left in Britain. And he knows that you’re the only failing Arthur has.”

“You’re making me blush.” Sarcasm was comfortable on Lancelot’s tongue, slick and easy to throw out. He bent forward till they were close enough to taste each other’s breath and watched as her irises went gold. Listened as her pulse briefly sped up. So she wasn’t quite so serene as she obviously considered herself to be. “So you’re what in this grand scheme of Merlin’s? The decoy?”

Guinevere shrugged. “Probably. It’s been a few years since I’ve directly spoken to Merlin, and…and he wasn’t there. On Marius’ farm. He didn’t see—he doesn’t know, and he wouldn’t ever understand. But I do.”

“Do…” Lancelot trailed off, flapping his hand in an interrogative gesture.

“That God and Rome are dead to me now,” interjected a third voice. Arthur betrayed a flash of amusement at their startled jerks, but that soon faded to a fierce black despair. He stood up and took slow steps towards them, moving like—prowling. Like he was hunting them, Lancelot realized with abrupt dread. Like the Arthur that would rage free when events pushed him beyond his control, like the Arthur that terrified them both. “That I am being whittled away by duty and compassion, and that all I receive in replacement are war and death and sorrow. That I either have to make my stand and die as I am, or change and die as something that I know nothing of.”

As she spoke, hesitant and unsure, Guinevere unconsciously curled closer to Lancelot, as if he was safer. Which he was at the moment, and which was just an example of what strange ways constant battle twisted lives. “I…in that prison, I saw that Britain needed to be freed. And I saw that it needed more than ferocious warriors. It needs a strong, caring hand to guide it—those slaves of Marius were fearful and weak, but as soon as you came…”

“Whose game are you playing?” Arthur’s hand crashed into the trunk six inches from Lancelot’s head, trapping them between him and the tree. The eyes he turned on Guinevere were gold and black, too full of keen intelligence for comfort. “Because I’ll tell you this—your _land_ can take my faith, my beliefs, my life—but I won’t let it take this.”

And Arthur’s palm scraped down the bark to land on Lancelot’s shoulder. Fingers curled tight around Lancelot’s neck, so tight that he could feel the bruises stretching into the bone, spreading out with the heat that suddenly swelled through him. He tried to speak, but the words caught themselves in his mouth, raking blood out whenever he tried to free them.

In the end, Lancelot turned his face to the side and pressed it into the side of Arthur’s jaw, baring his throat. He hoped that that would be enough.

Arthur’s breath hissed in, held for a long moment, and then came out filled with his pent-up fury. Drained, he swayed into Lancelot and simply nipped at the offered curve, gently lipping it.

“I’m not playing by any rules but my own,” Guinevere finally said. She was still stuck between them, so her words ghosted over both their faces. “That’s why Merlin sent me up north—so I could learn to do that. I want Britain to prosper. And I want you—I want—”

“Britain needs a general, Arthur.”

Tonight was the one for unusual meetings, Lancelot irritably thought. Merlin, finally making his grand entrance.

“You killed my mother,” Arthur snarled, not moving. “Do you remember? A house, a fire…a boy with his father’s sword…”

“I do. It wasn’t my intent; she was a Briton and I had no quarrel with her.” Sincere enough, but Lancelot didn’t doubt that Merlin could dissemble like a professional politician when it pleased him.

Guinevere laid one hand on Arthur’s cheek, and the other on Lancelot’s shoulder. “I didn’t kill your mother,” she whispered. “Will you hold all of us responsible for that, forever?”

Arthur didn’t reply for a long time, choosing instead to look at Lancelot as if he saw some secret within Lancelot’s eyes. But that couldn’t be it, because Lancelot had never hid anything from Arthur, and he’d never be able to.

“No,” Arthur finally said. He closed his eyes. “Speak your part, then.”


	6. Badon Hill

The ground was full of frozen rocks, and since they were sleeping in full armor, Gawain wasn’t much more comfortable. A whisper of air chilled down the back of Galahad’s collar, shivering him further into the other man’s bedroll so he banged his forehead on steel. “Shit!”

Snuffle. One eye cracked open to glare at the misty light oozing over the sky, then shifted down to look at Galahad. “Stop. Moving.”

“Time to wake up,” murmured a third voice. Tristan, whose movements had been the source of the breeze. He squatted by Galahad’s head, hands loosely dangling between his knees so the worn nails scraped the dirt. “The Saxons are coming.”

“That sounds like the end of a bad drinking story.” Nevertheless, when Tristan wanted them to get up and go, it generally was a good idea to listen, if only to avoid the embarrassing fate of being dragged up, kicked into going, and then turning around to find Tristan already up front. Though that didn’t make Galahad’s mood any sweeter. “I hate this. If that bastard Germanius doesn’t give us our damned discharges after this, then Arthur or no Arthur, my sword’s going to have something to say about that.”

Groaning beneath his breath, Gawain shoved Galahad all the way out of the bedroll, then levered himself up by his elbows. As he rubbed his eyes clear, he absently grabbed at Tristan’s shoulder for support. “Galahad, would you just shut up about the discharges? We all _know_ , all right?”

“No, I won’t. Because maybe we know, but no one else is complaining, are they? And if no one does, then maybe Germanius will think we’re all honored and happy to be his fucking curs, doing his dirty work for him. And maybe it’ll be another last mission, and another—” Tristan’s hand slapped across Galahad’s mouth, cutting him off. When he snarled and snapped at it, Gawain cuffed him on the head and knocked askew his angle of attack so instead of sinking his teeth into Tristan’s palm, he ended up mouthing air.

Of course, Tristan might as well have been on a pleasant stroll for all his change in expression. He merely ruffled Galahad’s curls into his eyes, then handed over the meager rations that made up breakfast. “And what were you planning to do with your discharge? Did we wreck some elaborate timetable you had?”

“You sound like you don’t even want it,” Galahad accused in between bites. Long habit made him cram down the food so he wouldn’t be off-guard for any more time than he had to be, even though Tristan was around to keep watch. “Do you actually _like_ this place?”

Cool eyes studied him, flicking judgment over his face and hands. Then Tristan lifted and dropped a shoulder. “The forest is beautiful. Aside from the fighting. And here, they don’t hunt us simply because of what we are. You saw—the Britons have people like us, and they aren’t hated by the others.”

“Right…I can’t believe I’d almost forgotten,” Gawain said, abruptly straightening himself. He stared down the line of wagons and their attendant cloth-wrapped people, who bundled into the side of the cliffs like so much debris. “That woman—Guinevere. She changed right in front of everyone, and so did Dagonet. And besides the Romans, who’re idiots anyway, they’ve all still been…when I look into their eyes, there isn’t even any disgust.”

“So what? So the Woads still hate us for killing them. So this land is raining when it’s not snowing, and foggy when it’s not raining. So there has to be something better.” With a last gulp, Galahad finished his food and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He could feel his stomach already unsettling itself, and his fingers didn’t seem to want to hold still. “So I don’t want to _die_ in someone else’s war.”

Tristan and Gawain glanced at each other, probably to share their pitying contempt. Well, they could do that if they wanted; Galahad rose and slung on his sword, then turned for his horse. “Let’s just get back to the garrison. With any luck, Lancelot will have stopped nagging Arthur like an old—”

The roar thundered down the path, rattling ground so the snow flew up in sickly dust clouds. Galahad jerked around and was in a run before he even realized what he was doing.

“Dagonet?” Gawain panted, having instantly done the same. As usual, Tristan was loping far ahead, ranging wide to view the whole awful situation.

And it was that bad, and Galahad was kicking himself for not getting around to tripping that son of a whore Marius into a ditch. It was small comfort that Tristan and Gawain betrayed identical feelings of helpless anger as they circled the Romans, who in turn kept close to their two hostages. The two guards held a snarling Dagonet at bay while their bastard master jabbed a knife beneath the Woad boy’s chin, eyes blazing with mad fury.

“Get back, you filthy demons,” Marius hissed, glaring over the too-calm boy’s head. “Get back, or I’ll kill him. Men! Slaughter that beast—”

The arrow whined past, coming within a foot of Galahad before it buried itself in Marius’ chest. Galahad spun about, sword up to meet the new intruder, only to find Guinevere with drawn bow and narrowed ice slivers for eyes. She was bracketed by Arthur and Lancelot, both of whom had their swords out.

“Perversions.” Croaked voice bubbling with malice to the very end. Turning just in time to see, Galahad watched Marius tumble down with no small welling of satisfaction in his chest. Everything that was the worst of Rome, finally on its face before its betters. “Demons…”

“That may be, but at least we have some sense of humanity.” Arthur strode past Marius’ dying twitches, barely sparing a glance. He did give Marius’ wife and ward a long, considering look, but the youth watched his foster father with a sadness that was remarkably devoid of any vengeful tendencies. The woman was focused on the Woad boy, who’d scrambled from Marius’ grasp as soon as it’d begun to slacken and was now nestling in Dagonet’s arms.

“You and you.” With his sword, Arthur pointed out Marius’ pet soldiers. “Either throw in your lot with us, or go free. We’ll not hinder you if you decide to risk the Saxons. Everyone else, start moving; we have to cross the river now, and we can’t afford to waste more time.”

Gray-faced, they made no response except to shuffle back into the ring of wide-eyed people, all of whom were fixated on Arthur. For such a depressed man, he had an amazing ability to make people love him.

Snorting at that thought, Galahad turned away and went for his horse. As he mounted, he kept a close eye on his leader and Arthur’s two shadows, who spent nearly as much time trying to avoid each other as they did trying to be the nearest to Arthur. Something had changed there, though it didn’t seem to be a reconciliation—if that had been so, Lancelot’s swagger would have been a little stiffer, and his smirk a little lazier. Yet more worries, as if they didn’t have enough without having to create some themselves.

Galahad managed to keep himself busy enough chivvying the human baggage that Gawain didn’t get a chance to speak with him until they were nearly at the river. And by then, the stench of the Saxons was rolling in, foul rot stuffing up Galahad’s nose whenever it thawed enough to be capable of smelling. It would’ve been more convenient if they could run along as wolves, but no matter how accepting the Britons seemed to be, he still didn’t trust them.

“Galahad.” Gawain’s voice was starting to edge itself with aggravation. “Would you just—”

“You heard Tristan. Saxons right up our asses.” The river was iced over, so at least they didn’t have to worry about boats. One good happenstance for the day, as Galahad had hated ships ever since the troop transports that had pitched them around from Sarmatia to Gaul, and then again across the Channel.

A hand seized Galahad’s shoulder and swung him around to face a truly upset Gawain. “Look,” the other man hissed. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but we’re about to pit seven of us against two hundred stinking Germans, and I’m not going to risk dying with this between us.”

“You don’t—I _hate_ this, and you don’t seem to. Now get off.” Ignoring the curious stares they were getting, Galahad slapped away Gawain’s hand and dug his heels into his horse. If he kept moving fast enough, then he wouldn’t have the time to think about the sour taste that stained his tongue whenever he saw Gawain like that. Or whenever he could tell that Tristan was understanding something about Gawain that he couldn’t.

Unfortunately, Gawain hurriedly caught up, face etched with barely-restrained anger. “I hate the fighting and the Romans, but no, I don’t hate everything like you. Because if I did, then I’d hate what we have. Here. In Britain. So forgive me I don’t think our time here’s been a complete waste.”

The words hit Galahad low in the belly and stabbed inside to sink down to his knees, spreading chilly lead in his veins as they went. He opened his mouth, then had to close it because anything that he could’ve possibly said wouldn’t have been good enough.

But Gawain was riding onto the frozen river, not even looking at him, and suddenly Galahad understood enough to know that if he didn’t say something soon, he would have to face death with nothing to look forward to. He kicked his horse and rushed alongside the other man, holding out his hand. “Wait—that’s not what I meant. I just…it’s so tangled. We’re fighting Woads and saving them, and there are Woads that can do what we do, and use it to try and kill us, and…I don’t know. I remember Sarmatia, and I remember that it wasn’t this complicated.”

“Your family almost burned you alive when you went back to them, and out of all of us, you’re most desperate to return.” Gawain shook his head, reluctant amusement drawing a half-smile on his face. “You know it won’t be any more simple there. It only looks that way.”

“I never know what to look at. Tristan’s so much better at that—you don’t even need—” The rest of Galahad’s sentence was swallowed by the huge groan that cracked up between his frightened horse’s rearing hooves. He hastily jumped down and soothed it, but had to start that all over again when another moan ominously vibrated through the ice.

A strong gust of wind blew the Saxons’ reeking stink into their faces, sharp reminder that there was no other way to go but forward. Arthur was shouting, telling the Britons to spread out and keep moving and ordering the knights to him. They’d have to make some kind of stand in order to buy time, and they were almost certainly going to pay dearly for it with their own blood.

It was funny, but Galahad didn’t hesitate in getting his bow and quiver and obeying Arthur. Or maybe it wasn’t, because what he’d said earlier did apply to him: he loved and cleaved to Arthur just like the rest of them, even if he did occasionally grow restless beneath it. The man had done too much, cared too much, fought too hard for even Galahad to resist Arthur’s call. And it was Arthur’s and not Rome’s that drew them.

“Gawain…” Galahad waited for the other man to catch up and start arranging his weapons on the ice. “I’m sorry for all the times I was in the way.”

For a moment, Gawain just stared, hands stilling on the ax-handle. Then he gave Galahad an incredulous look. “You—you think I don’t want you there?”

“Well, it’s not like I do anything Tristan can’t. And—and whatever you two want to do, don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.” Pride wouldn’t let Galahad end there; he lifted his chin and set his jaw as he took up his bow. “If you’d ever stop fussing, you’d know that by now.”

“You _idiot_.” Gawain’s smack nearly knocked Galahad over, and then the other man trapped Galahad’s head against his chest, squeezing it near to popping. “You were going to take Sarmatia as second-best because you thought—oh, you fucking moron. When this is over, I’m going to sit you down and not let you up until I’ve beaten some sense into you.”

A polite cough brought the other knights’ amusement to their attention. Cheeks flushing pink, Gawain quickly released Galahad and busied himself with examining his arrows. He did, however, move Galahad’s sword so it lay next to his ax and mace.

“So…” The world had taken so many tilts in the past few seconds that Galahad wasn’t sure whether he should even risk finishing his sentence.

“So you’re staying with us,” Gawain snapped. “Wherever that ends up being…and what are _you_ doing?”

That last to Guinevere, who had shown up out of nowhere and was now settling her things between Gawain and Arthur. She arched one brow at him. “You could use another bow.”

“Well, be careful, lady,” Lancelot said, still sarcastic as ever despite the Saxons now advancing onto the ice. “There’s large number of lonely men out there.”

Her mouth curved, sweet and sharp. Whatever pact she’d made with Arthur and Lancelot, Galahad didn’t envy the keeping of it. “Don’t worry. I won’t let them rape you.”

On the other hand, Galahad might actually be starting to like her. It served that annoying ass right, and it gave Galahad something to laugh about so he didn’t notice the growing fear that was knotting his stomach. He fitted arrow to bow, chose his first target, and then stole a last glance at Gawain…and yes, at Tristan. Two things to look forward to were better than one, after all. And with the current odds against them, they all needed every advantage that they could find.

* * *

One moment Arthur was shooting as fast as he could, trying to concentrate on aiming while his gut was screaming that the ice wasn’t going to break, that it wasn’t working, that he’d gambled all their lives and failed—and the next he himself was screaming after Dagonet’s back.

Lancelot shouted as well, but Arthur couldn’t make out the words because he was drawing his bow even quicker, making the string whine in protest as he futilely tried to cut down the Saxon archers before they could turn themselves to Dagonet. Of course it didn’t work, and he had to watch drowned in horror as first one arrow, then another slammed into Dagonet. The huge ax swayed in the air one last time, weak and fading, but then it steadied somehow and came down, final blow reverberating through the world as its handler also fell.

The ice cracked, long fissures whipping out to vein the river with icy torrents that splashed Arthur as he ran forward. Something nearly caught his cloak as he went—perhaps fingers—but he hardly noticed. His vision had shrunk to the fallen man on the white plain, to the slip and slide of intentions gone wrong beneath him. He’d always known about the price they’d have to pay—he’d seen it paid again and again—but somehow this was like having to learn that lesson all over again. The shock of it crippled his limbs, making his arms too slow as they hooked beneath Dagonet’s arms and his legs too heavy as he tried to haul them to safety.

“God, God—no.” Arthur caught himself and thrust away that old habit, knowing it would do nothing but let him down once more. His mouth swam with bitterness and his ears rang with the cries of men soaring high above the booming, breaking ice. “Dagonet, don’t—”

“Got him!” Bors, suddenly rushing up and lending his strength, and then it was enough. As they raced the fracturing of the river, he kept babbling to Dagonet in their mother-tongue, soft broken fragments of Vanora’s missing Dagonet’s help and of the daughter Dagonet had to have so she could marry Bors’ third boy. It made Arthur wish he’d never learned the Sarmatian dialects.

They laid Dagonet down well clear of the vast expanse of free water that now ate up half the river, Bors holding Dagonet’s head while Arthur frantically probed around the arrows in Dagonet’s body, searching for—for hope.

That was it. He’d been given hope last night. He’d seen a way out—and then the next day, death had come to remind him that no one escaped its grasp. Yet why couldn’t it have been him? He’d asked for that, and after so many years of faithful service, he couldn’t even be granted such a little request? Arthur wasn’t inclined to demands, but neither was he to passivity, and he had been pushed too far too many times. He was shattering, just as the ice had beneath Dagonet’s ax.

Distantly, he realized that the Saxons had been engulfed by the river, and would not trouble them any more.

Right in front of him, so close his fingers could touch the last wisp, the life went out of Dagonet. Arthur bit down on his lip, but instead of blood he tasted hot coals.

Fingers suddenly dug into his shoulder, clawing deep so he couldn’t ignore them. He snarled into the twist, spinning on his toes to confront whoever would dare—

\--Lancelot and Guinevere, both grabbing at the same time. He was pale, fear and worry showing fierce in his eyes, and trembling. So was she, and she had her other hand wrapped around the hilt of a dagger strapped to her side.

“We need to catch up with the others,” Guinevere whispered.

“You’re starting to shift,” Lancelot said. His hand edged up Arthur’s shoulder to brush fingertips against muscles knotted halfway between shapes. It stayed there until Arthur had wrestled the wolf down into the dark, and then it grazed Arthur’s jaw before pulling Guinevere’s hand off. “Bors, you carry Dagonet’s body. We’ll make sure he gets a grave at least.”

Arthur shook his head, then closed his eyes and forced himself to remember all the things that still remained between himself and peace. “No. Carry him with us, but he wanted to be burned. He talked with a priest while we were crossing Gaul—the man told him that burning the body freed the soul to travel. And that’s what he wanted after that.”

And so that was what they did. Afterwards, Arthur climbed back onto his horse and led the retreat, just as if it’d been any other time a knight had died under him. The others were wise enough to leave him alone, though for a time Guinevere rode beside him as wishing for some conversation. Lancelot and the other knights knew better, and stayed well clear.

They would kill for him and die for him—they would stay for him even if they hated it, he now saw. Not only Lancelot, but all of them, and none of them came close to deserving that fate. If there was a responsibility to be taken up, it fell only to him and shouldn’t be chained to them as well. He’d made his bed long ago, and no one else needed to suffer it with him.

Guinevere would have her general, and her leader of men, and that uncrushed spirit of a woman wouldn’t need to offer anything of herself in return. Lancelot would have his discharge and his bright future. As for Arthur…he’d been hiding parts of himself for so long that he no longer knew who he was. Not Roman, Briton or Sarmatian…a man without a country, which was a fitting match for a land without a single people. He would pull the Woads together and let them finally break him, since God seemed to insist on only breaking those around them.

But it hurt—pain in Arthur’s breast, agony every time he breathed. A kind of dress rehearsal for death every time he thought about a life without wicked double-edged laughter…and dimly now, the wisp of flowing sleeves over a quick bow. Lancelot, the one faith Arthur had never doubted, and behind him Guinevere, the one who’d offered him hope in a hopeless land.

If there was one thing he did know, it was what he _wanted_. 

No, two things, Arthur bitterly reminded himself—the second piece of knowledge being that he couldn’t have what he wanted without destroying it. He’d preached about freedom all his life, and now was the time for him to put that into practice. 

* * *

It was a finely-made thing, inlaid with ivory and gilt, hinges well-oiled so it almost seemed to glide open. The inside was lined with a fabric that was too soft and sleek to be believed, running like water beneath Tristan’s fingertips.

Soft footfalls had long since alerted him to Galahad’s approach, and so he wasn’t startled by the brusque remark. “Why’d you keep that?”

“Because I wanted to see what was so special about a box that was capable of holding freedom.” Tristan turned on the cot and handed it over to Galahad, then finished packing his few belongings. They made a neat, small bundle on the floor; his hawk took a liking to it and insisted on settling on top for the night. Shrugging, Tristan carefully moved her out of the way so Gawain wouldn’t trip on her.

Frowning, Galahad was flipping the box over and over in his hands. “Looks normal enough to me. Pretty, but it’s really just wood and a few bits of metal.”

“So it is.” Boots were next, getting shoved under the bed after Tristan had undone the laces. Then he stripped off the pieces of armor he still wore as well as most of the leather undergarments, setting them all aside on a nearby stool. “It never held it.”

Surprisingly, Galahad seemed to understand right away. “Like Arthur says, you’re thinking. Freedom isn’t something that can been traded around.”

“Freedom is the opportunity to do what you want, when you want.” Fatigue and remembered death weighed heavily on Tristan’s bones, making them ache as he laid down on his back. He stared at the ceiling, suddenly struck by the likeness of its cracks to the fragmenting river ice. “Are you leaving with the Romans tomorrow?”

The cot creaked as Galahad sat down on the edge; Tristan momentarily wondered about its sturdiness, then remembered that they’d long since broadened and strengthened the bed. No point in repairing the legs every morning if they could prevent those from breaking. Besides, Galahad didn’t stop fidgeting even in the deepest sleep.

“I used to think it was that,” Galahad muttered. His fingers absently plucked at the blankets, then patted them flat. “But now it’s more like suddenly having to be responsible for every damned thing in the world.”

“What, you can’t think for yourself? I thought Gawain and I had done a better job than that.” Tristan was expecting to deflect a physical blow, and so he was caught off-guard when Galahad answered him with words instead. Perhaps they’d taught him too well.

The discharge, paper already smudged with black and brown, appeared between Galahad’s fingers. He twirled it, then tapped it against his other palm. “Before, I could blame whatever I lost on other people, because I had to follow orders. Now, if I lose something it’s my own fault.”

Too intent on his own thoughts, Galahad didn’t notice Gawain quietly walking in, upwind of the slight breeze in the barracks. The other man raised a questioning eyebrow at Tristan, who surreptitiously waved it down. Melancholy Galahad was rare enough, but thoughtful Galahad was almost non-existent, and Tristan suddenly wanted to know very badly what had changed the other man so much in such a short period of time.

“I don’t want to see you or Gawain die like Dagonet did.” Galahad bit down on the end of his statement, chewing his lip. A faint blush came and went. “Not that I’ve learned to like you or anything, because I don’t. But…you’ve always been around, and…I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want you to leave Gawain, either, because the jackass would mope. And I know you don’t want to.”

“Thank you,” Tristan muttered. Typical of Galahad to fumble insult into compliment, but—it was familiar. Comfortable. And true, even if it might have been better for Tristan to deny that.

The other man pulled a knee up to his chest and rested his chin on it. It always amused Tristan how quickly the years would fall away from Galahad whenever he did something like that. “You could actually say something, you know. Tell Gawain, because otherwise he’s never going to guess—”

“So that’s what you think of me.” Gawain finally made his presence known, ambling over to ruffle Galahad’s quickly-ducked head. “Oh, for—stop blushing so much. You look like a girl.”

“Bastard.” Galahad’s other knee went up and he curled even more tightly around himself. “Are either of you leaving?”

Instead of answering, Gawain plopped down beside Galahad and twisted his fingers into a painful-looking knot. The tip of his tongue flicked out the corner of his mouth as it always did whenever he was nervous or concentrating too hard. “There are more Saxons, just outside the Wall. You can’t count the campfires because they go past the horizon.”

“Faster than I thought.” Tristan sat up and waited for Galahad’s temper to explode.

But the other man continued to throw up surprises, limiting himself to a vitriolic but relatively restrained, “Fuck.”

“Arthur won’t ask us to fight. He wants us to leave. I heard him talking to Lancelot about it,” Gawain added, staring out the doorway. His hands were clenched on his knees as tightly as Tristan’s ribs suddenly were around his lungs. “He’s staying and fighting with the Woads.”

“So what are you doing?” Galahad asked. It was fairly clear that his question was directed at both of them. It was also fairly obvious that he was steeling himself not to argue with what he presumed it would be.

Except Tristan didn’t have an answer within him, and from the looks of things, neither did Gawain. Staying or going—at first, it looked to be the simple choice of dying or living that they’d not had the chance to make since being taken in by Arthur. Long years learning all the possible explanations that could lie behind just a single broken twig had, however, taught Tristan that nothing was ever that simple.

They owed Arthur. He’d always sacrificed as much or more for them as they had for him, and they didn’t want him to die for any stranger’s sake, either. And they didn’t even know what kind of welcome awaited them in Sarmatia, or what kind of death might stalk them in Britain now, after so many changes had been set in motion.

Gawain sighed and half-turned from the door to stare at them, gaze going slow as honey, as if he were trying to memorize everything. “I don’t know. I’m going to sleep on it.”

“What? What kind of decision is that—” Galahad was too annoyed to even see Gawain’s hand coming. It tangled in his hair and yanked him forward into a kiss violent enough for Tristan to hear the loud snicks of teeth catching on teeth.

“For once, would you just shut up and try to understand?” Gawain mumbled in between kisses. His other hand was suddenly in frantic motion, stripping Galahad in mere seconds before shoving the other man half-over Tristan and pinning Galahad’s squirming there. “We’re not—I don’t _know_!”

Normally, Tristan trusted enough in Galahad’s sheer orneriness to let him handle things himself, but at the moment Galahad was nearly white, hands limply scrabbling at Gawain’s back. He wasn’t getting enough air, so Tristan pulled himself out from beneath him and jerked Gawain off. Consequently, the furious attack of fingers and mouth shifted to him, feverish touches lighting heat just under his skin as they peeled off his clothing. He tried to get a firm hold in Gawain’s hair, on Gawain’s shoulders, but it didn’t work. Drawing up his legs to force some space between them did nothing except convince Gawain to worm a hand beneath the knees and wrap it too tightly around Tristan’s cock. The heat flared into flame, and when Tristan breathed, he thought he could smell flesh burning.

“This is not sleeping on it,” Galahad’s voice laughed, shaky with a pinch of hysteria. His calmer hands slid down Tristan’s chest to cover Gawain’s, forcing them to stop; in the abrupt stillness that followed, Tristan gasped and hissed himself out of breathlessly broken composure.

His recovery didn’t last very long. Galahad took a final worried look at Gawain’s stony face before sucking in his breath and bending over to feed it to Tristan. The fingers around Tristan’s cock twitched, making him jerk up into the kiss. Nearly bit off Galahad’s tongue, which would have been a shame because that was one thing the man could use very well. Tristan’s eyelashes fluttered against Galahad’s forehead, never quite making it all the way down because their faces were pressed too closely together.

When they broke apart, it was to see an awed, aroused Gawain watching them with dark gold-sheened eyes. “If I could die seeing that, I think I’d be happy.”

“Does it matter where you’re seeing it?” Galahad whispered. His fingertips were nervously petting at Tristan’s ribs, and one thumb occasionally flicked a nipple. It didn’t look as if he realized what he was doing.

“Does it to you?” Gawain countered, voice thick-rough like winter bark.

Before he answered, Galahad ducked his head and tucked it beneath Gawain’s chin, nuzzling at the other man’s breastbone. “Not…really. If you’re around.”

“All right, then.” Gawain nipped at Galahad’s ear, then pushed past him to come down on Tristan. His lips drew the moans right out of Tristan’s mouth, dragging them out even when it hurt—except it wasn’t quite painful when Gawain did it. And his hands were gentler now, more directed in their rasping caresses that set every nerve to singing.

Something about Gawain’s hair, long and beautiful and always tangled, had always called to Tristan. He couldn’t help but knot his hands in it, feeling the different slide of braids and loose strands against his palm, while Gawain ravaged down the side of his neck, while two and then three hands stroked between his legs. It sometimes tickled, sometimes scratched—Galahad did like pushing it—but there was always someone’s mouth to seek soothing from.

Galahad settled beside Tristan, nestling hard prick against Tristan’s hip and lazily rubbing it along the bony curving top as he licked and nibbled from shoulder to jaw to ear. “It’s funny,” he murmured. “You’re good at everything, but when it comes to him you’re pathetic.”

Tristan craned his head and bit Galahad’s lip, then refused to let go when the other man squeaked and hissed. But then Gawain’s first slicked finger jabbed inside, cracking everything wide open, and Tristan couldn’t hang on any more. Or defend himself as Galahad took revenge by sucking at the edges of his moan-slackened mouth and by teasing the space between his balls and between the mercilessly _good_ movements of Gawain’s fingers. His fingers nervelessly fell from Gawain’s hair.

“If you don’t stop irking him, you’re going to get it when your turn comes,” Gawain scolded. But he was smiling as he swiped a tongue over Tristan’s thigh, ending with a flick against the tip of Galahad’s cock. Jump and groan into Tristan’s lips, and then sharp shiver as Gawain’s head buried itself into the business of dismantling Galahad as thoroughly as Gawain’s hands were Tristan.

It took the space of a bare four ragged breaths before Galahad whipped himself against Tristan and keened, face dropping down to press the high thin sound against Tristan’s neck. Gawain leaned back, satisfaction and faint white traces smeared across his mouth, and gave his fingers one last hook-push that momentarily sent Tristan’s vision into the black.

“So much for keeping up with me,” was how Gawain greeted Tristan’s return to full consciousness.

Galahad was fast, but Tristan had the better angle for knocking Gawain over and rolling him under. Took the time to properly clean Gawain’s face with tongue, and by then Gawain was considerably less smug and considerably more desperate. His face was an open plea. “Tristan…”

“I—I want—” _Damn_ Galahad and his constant challenges, and damn Gawain for always making it so difficult to speak. “Stay with me.”

Two bodies wrapped around Tristan, but it was Gawain that stroked a knuckle down the side of his face, then curled possessive fingers around the back of his neck. “If you tell me you were thinking I’d—how the fuck did I end up with two idiots?”

“Call us that again and we’ll go to sleep on you,” Galahad snorted, helping Tristan undress Gawain. He glanced mischief at Tristan, who had to admit that Gawain did deserve it.

Together, he and Galahad bent over and devoured Gawain.

* * *

Lancelot knew this path so well he didn’t need to have his eyes open even for the lock-picking. Arthur would be stubborn, as always. Stubborn and too far gone within himself to notice anything but the parts of the world that were just as black.

“Who’s there—Lancelot?” Arthur put his sword away and swung his legs over the side of his bed, confused frown grooving both his forehead and his mouth. The years were beginning to catch up to him, Lancelot abruptly saw with brutal clarity. “What are you doing here? You need to sleep—” deprecating irony straining Arthur’s mouth “—it’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

“I was thinking about what you told me…about going off to live for both of us.” A chair was conveniently near, but Lancelot chose instead to stand and lean against the bedpost. His stomach was rattling about inside him, queasy and scared in a way that he never experienced in battle. Or in anything except making himself confront Arthur, really. “I can’t.”

Without taking his eyes off Lancelot, Arthur slowly straightened up and clenched his hands on his knees. His face didn’t change its expression so much as close down so tightly that no emotion could get in or out. “What? You’ll die if you stay here.”

“Nice to see the level of confidence you’ve got in your new command.” Sarcasm was an old, probably bad habit, but it did give Lancelot a little distance from the situation. He managed to keep his arms around himself and not around Arthur.

“Lancelot—”

But neither sarcasm nor dark humor had ever been a sufficient barrier against the fierce, frighteningly deep emotion that Arthur always brought to the surface in Lancelot. It wasn’t even an identifiable feeling because it was tangled with so many elements: loyalty, caring, anger and sadness and longing.

“Don’t, Arthur.” Lancelot dropped to his knees and grabbed Arthur’s hands, keeping the other man from doing anything but look at him. “Don’t give me any argument about honor or beliefs or rights—I already know what those are to me. And it won’t—”

“I can’t survive if you’re dead,” Arthur abruptly snarled, fingers squeezing Lancelot’s hands till the bones ground pain out of each other. He tried to drag Lancelot to standing, and when he was refused, all the little cracks and broken spots were suddenly visible in his stricken eyes. “Get up, damn it. I never asked for this.”

Shaking his head, Lancelot couldn’t help a laugh at the whole mess. His amusement was like cinders in his mouth, but at least there were a few sparks among the ashes. Not quite dead yet. “I know you never asked for it, but I never asked you to die for my sake, either. And I never will. Arthur—I can’t--I can never leave you. That’s all. And you can’t do a damned thing about it, so stop trying.”

Arthur stopped breathing.

The knots in Lancelot’s gut went another twist, squeezing more terrified uncertainty. He grabbed at Arthur’s wrists, pulses beating against his palms, and hastily memorized it all just in case he’d finally gone so far he’d lost it all. “I’m kneeling to you because you deserve it. Because you do that to me. Because I want to do it for you. Because I know that I’ll die in battle—I can’t not—but when that happens, I want to be able to see you as my last living sight. Because—”

“Stop,” Arthur hissed, and when he wrenched Lancelot from the floor, it was as impossible to resist the sheer vicious force of it as it was to try and not age. Then his mouth was on Lancelot’s, crushing the air between them, and his hands were everywhere at once, stroking and holding and squeezing, possessing and demanding and painfully free of reluctance.

“Stop—” lips branding Lancelot’s throat and face “—stop, God, stop doing this—” fingers raking the clothes from him so fast the leather left hot pink burns behind, but then hot palms were searing away that hurt “—I can’t, I can’t—”

Lancelot had to struggle not to be immediately consumed by the desperation and anguish that caught him up, that tangled them to the bed in a mess of whimpering and gasping. He found himself chewing on sheets and spit them out, pushing himself up on elbows and knees just in time to collide with a fury of heat and wet and smoothly rasping skin on skin. Arthur pinned him down and savaged trembles out of him, licking and biting down backbone and then up again so every single nerve in Lancelot’s body spasmed at once.

And then the other man abruptly turned slow, palms gliding agonizingly light pressure down Lancelot’s back and sides and thighs, then sliding in. Gentle kisses at the back of his neck stabbed straight through, and when he reared back into Arthur’s oiled fingers, Lancelot could see tears falling onto the pillow before him. He collapsed again, filled his mouth with cloth while Arthur filled him first with careful fingers, then with hard cock that stretched scars all through Lancelot.

“I can’t sacrifice you,” Arthur was saying, low and broken. “Can’t give this up, and God, it’s going to kill you…”

“Just—” whimpers were constantly silencing Lancelot “—let me stay. I don’t care about anything else—let me stay. Let me—oh. Oh.”

And he forgot which language he was supposed to speak in, but it didn’t matter because Arthur always understood it anyway. There weren’t the words, so Lancelot turned to movement: clawing at the blankets, bucking to feel Arthur’s chest for just a moment, hip-rolling clenches so Arthur wouldn’t be able to leave himself behind with this.

Coming, lashing himself to pieces, Lancelot could dimly feel the same happening to Arthur. It was a small victory in comparison to the battles they still had to fight, but he seized it anyway and held onto it.

A tired hand cupped his face and made him see the final walls falling from Arthur’s eyes. “You are…you’ve got to be the most frustrating, beautiful, damnable man I’ve ever met.”

“If you were a maid, I could tell you that I love you,” Lancelot replied, turning his head to suck at each of Arthur’s fingertips. “But it’s…not as nice and gentle as that. And it’s worth more than a few sorry words.”

Arthur sighed and buried his face in Lancelot’s hair. “I don’t want to hate myself for this, but you make it difficult.”

“He doesn’t. You do that yourself,” said a third voice.

And Guinevere should have been expected, but Lancelot was still furious with her…usurpation of this. Her and her intrusions. “Go away, girl. Bed is full.”

“I’m not a girl, and while the bed is full, the chair isn’t.” Wood scraped on stone as Guinevere took a seat. Lancelot started to sit up, but Arthur dragged him back and clamped an arm around him, keeping him securely tucked beneath Arthur’s chin. “I didn’t come to offer myself because I thought it would ensure your loyalty, Arthur. It’s obvious enough that you don’t break your promises.”

“Most of them,” Arthur acknowledged with no small amount of irony. His fingers nipped at Lancelot’s inner thigh before curling around Lancelot’s hip. “So why are you here?”

Her shrug was casual enough, but the serenity in her face was close to shaking apart. She fidgeted a little with her dress, but didn’t drop her gaze. “Because I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but…I wasn’t lying when I said I grew up on fairytales about you. About you both. And I wanted to see if they were true.”

A lopsided smile on his face, Arthur waved his arm at the bed. His eyes softened a little as he looked at her, and when she looked at him, she let her smooth coy guard drop a bit to show the woman beneath the conniver. “Only men, I’m afraid,” Arthur said.

“I think I like them better. Legends always run the risk of disappointment. Men don’t.” Guinevere stood up and came to the side of the bed, where she paused, looking at Lancelot.

Well, she was right. They didn’t know what would happen on the morrow—but tonight, everyone was seeing who they were. And Lancelot was not, in the end, cruel in his jealousy. Or blind. She was leading the Woads, and of all the people in the garrison, she probably knew best what Arthur and he were going through. If they lived, she would be their best ally in…whatever they ended up making of themselves in Britain. And if she could do anything good for Arthur…

Lancelot moved aside, and she settled next to him against Arthur.

* * *

Galahad stared down at the massing Saxons, fingers playing over the front of his saddle. “Gawain? What are we doing again?”

“Shut up and think about how to kill those bastards,” Bors snapped. “Vanora’s due in four months, and I’m not missing this one.”

“So how’s she feel about staying?” Gawain asked, ignoring Galahad.

Bors shrugged and rolled his shoulders, resettling his armor in a minor cacophony of squeaks and clatters. “Well, she didn’t want to move in the first place. Britain’s her home. And she swears that the Britons won’t hunt our children. When I told her about how our families drove us out, she threw a fit.”

“The Britons think of our kind as the best warriors. If anything, the wolves are the ones ruling the Woads,” Lancelot suddenly said. It was the first time he’d spoken since coming into the barracks first thing in the morning and telling them all that he was staying to fight beside Arthur. He hadn’t asked them for anything and neither had Arthur, but then, those two had never really needed to. And now they were sitting on the hill, watching Arthur come back from meeting with the apparent Saxon leader.

That was a decision Galahad still didn’t quite understand. He remembered making it clear enough, but now that he was looking on the consequences, he couldn’t figure out how he’d made it. It’d been a complete muddle of looking at Gawain’s solemn face, and Tristan already reaching for his armor, and Bors kissing a proud, terrified Vanora. Galahad’s stomach had flopped sideways and the subsequent cold nausea had dragged every thought from his head except one: he was staying.

“That explains a lot.” Gawain was shading his eyes with his hands, lips silently moving as he counted the number in the Saxon contingent that advanced first. “Don’t suppose you could’ve mentioned that before?”

“No, I couldn’t. I didn’t know till…” Lancelot tucked in his chin and coughed, actually looking a little embarrassed. “Guinevere told us last night. She was promising that her people wouldn’t still seek revenge on us afterward. Apparently, it’s considered extremely bad luck to kill someone who’s got two skins unless you’ve also got the gift of shifting. Though that didn’t seem to be much of an issue before…”

As he nocked an arrow to his bow, Tristan slanted a curious look at Lancelot. “Guinevere told…you…and Arthur?”

Half-shrugging, Lancelot concentrated very hard on watching Arthur ride up. “She’s persistent. And, well, there’s some brains to go with the nice breasts. Arthur seems to like her.”

“You know, now I’m almost hoping we die here. Living afterward would be a lot more complicated.” Gawain was only half-joking, and that comprehension showed on everyone’s face.

In their own ways, they were all frightened, Galahad suddenly saw. Not because of the Saxons, or because of the fight ahead of them—they knew that business well enough, and death was the same whether it came from a German sword or a Briton one—but because for the first time, they didn’t know what lay ahead. They had no idea what went beyond the battle, and still they were choosing it.

Maybe that was freedom, then: risking the unknown because you loved something that much. And all right, compared to Gawain and Tristan, Sarmatia was nothing more than the mist on the sea.

“We’re insane,” Galahad muttered. “And if either of you die on me, I’m holding you both responsible.”

Gawain blinked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The twang of Tristan’s bow prevented Galahad from answering. Just beyond the wall on the Saxon side, something dark plummeted out of a tree. Tristan gave a satisfied nod and put away his bow, then stared up at his hawk, which was no more than a tiny blotch on the sky. “I let her go, but she always comes back of her own will.” His smile took on a bit of a mocking edge. “Galahad, if you had half her brains, I could die without worrying.”

“You fucking bastard.” Galahad rose in his stirrups, wondering just how much he could hurt Tristan and not make the odds against them any worse. However, his thoughts were interrupted by clattering hooves and a hoarse shout.

“Knights!” Arthur was back, halting his charger by the vexillation’s swooping red flickers through the air. Its tip occasionally brushed the top of his helmet and his shoulders, swirling to meet his cape in a continuous back-drop. “Knights! The gift of freedom is yours by right, and you cannot be denied it any longer. But the home we seek resides not in some distant land—it’s in us, and in our actions! If this be our destiny, then so be it. But history will remember that we chose it to be so. As free men, we chose it!”

Lancelot threw back his shoulders and sat up straight, reaching for his swords. He and Arthur shared a glance that fairly hummed with last words, and then he looked back out at the Saxons. “Knights. Time to slaughter them.”

And at first, that was what they did. The Saxon leader wasn’t a complete fool and sent in his men one group at a time, fearing a trap, but that strategy only worked to the knights’ advantage. When Woad arrows had forced the Saxon lines into defensive huddles, then the knights would ride down through the obscuring smoke and smash through the lines, effortlessly hacking it to bits. By the time they were finished with the first group, Galahad was having trouble holding onto his sword for all the blood that slicked it and him.

The second group went the same way, but when the third wave came in, there were too many for the arrows to reach at once, and so the ends of the lines remained on their feet and able to move.

“Time for the nasty part,” Gawain muttered as they regrouped one last time on the hill. He was gasping and trying not to, and when he caught Galahad’s curious look, he shrugged. “Too much blood. I keep wanting to shift.”

“Then go ahead,” Arthur said. His smile was a feral thing of curled lips and flashing teeth that would’ve looked more appropriate on Lancelot. “We’re not under anyone’s rules anymore. You can shift whenever you want.”

Tristan rode by, holding his sword high and far from him so the gobbets of flesh dripped away from his excited horse. “I think I’d save it for when we have to. I don’t know whether the Saxons have anyone like us.”

“Good point.” Arthur pulled back to speak with Lancelot, who seemed to be well into fight-fever, then rode back up. He lifted Excalibur over his head and thrust it at the advancing Saxons. “Charge!”

There were too many Saxons for the knights to break through the lines this time, but—Galahad pricked up as he galloped into the first Germans. The Woads, on the mark as promised. Their charge slammed into the Saxon flank and roiled it far enough for its chaos to join with the one the knights were creating. In less than two breaths, the Saxons went from ranks to bloody melee.

Damned Germans were too thick. Galahad used his superior height to hack down as many as he could, but more filled in the holes too quickly. When he could no longer hold them back, he slid off his horse and fought on foot. It was slower going, but better that than risking being dragged off and beaten to death.

Gawain was barely a yard from him, roaring over the swishing of his whirling mace and ax. Blood from his kills kept splattering Galahad, drenching him in the stench of dying life. One spurt almost blinded him to a Saxon running up from behind, and he only just caught the bastard’s throat with the edge of his shield. Then it was his turn to splash Gawain.

“Watch where you’re swinging that,” the other man growled, anger and black laughter present in equal parts in his voice. He’d switched to his tribal dialect, howling guttural obscenities back at the screaming Saxons.

“Go fuck yourself. Where’s Tristan?” Galahad sidestepped an oncoming attack and backhanded a deep slash into his opponent’s side, then smashed his shield down on the man’s head. He parried a sword and twisted to stab that one in the face, wrenching his blade out at an angle to meet a new charge. “Gawain?”

The mace slammed over Galahad’s shoulder, missing him by a bare inch to crush someone’s skull. “I’m looking. I’m— _shit_.”

When Galahad finally sliced away enough Saxons to see, he had to agree. Tristan and the Saxon leader—and Tristan was losing. As Galahad watched, the huge Saxon came within a hairsbreadth of slicing a staggering Tristan in two with an ax. When the gigantic thing came spinning at Tristan’s other side, he managed to pull himself up enough to block, but the Saxon caught him with a knee in the stomach. Wide-eyed, he went to his knees.

_\--stretchpaintwistfurroughroughsmooth--_

Galahad distantly hoped Gawain would keep an eye on his sword and shield for him. Frustrating that weapons would change with him when he was wearing them, but not when he was only holding them.

Not that he had much time to think about such things, or much rationality to do that with. Going to wolf always meant sinking into a shrieking storm of sounds and scents and _wants_ that washed the humanity into the blood. Blood, hot and coppery in Galahad’s mouth as he lunged on the first Saxon. By the time that body had fallen, he’d already torn through two more throats. It was easier to move like this. Better balance, more flexibility—he could dart between bodies and leap from gurgling dying to screaming prey without even having to touch the ground.

The Saxons were howling still, but the tone of their voice had changed. Gone higher, wilder, less supported. And they smelled—fear and loathing and fear and terror—it threatened to make Galahad drunk on it.

At the last minute, instinct jerked his aim from the Saxon leader’s throat to the man’s ax. Galahad tasted wood, felt splinters going into his tongue, but he hung on and wrenched the ax away by sheer weight. And had his thigh instead of his throat sliced by the Saxon’s sword.

Snarling, Tristan shook himself into wolf form and darted in front of Galahad while he recovered his balance. His leg burned with the hot blood trickling over him, but he could breathe without too much trouble. A glancing blow, then. And more Saxons—he shifted back and seized a cast-off shield just in time to block an arrow, then twisted about to grab Tristan by the scruff of his neck and heave him out of the path of the Saxon warlord’s sword. It wasn’t gentle and wasn’t going to help Tristan’s wounds any, but the idiot would go on ahead without letting anyone know. Good for scouting, bad for living. Galahad reminded himself to point that out sometime. When he wasn’t busy trying to keep them alive.

“They bleed!” the huge Saxon was yelling to his men. “They bleed!”

“And so do you!” Arthur plunged out of the clashing masses and surprised the Saxon, getting through his guard long enough to slash his arm. Then Arthur whipped around, coming back for another try.

Gawain suddenly hacked his way through the other side of the ring, blood-soaked and fire-eyed. He tossed Galahad’s sword back to him, then shoved the now-human Tristan back down to the ground and took up guard on the side opposite Galahad. “ _Down_.”

There was a new note in his voice: command. It shivered and warmed Galahad at the same time, but most importantly, it reassured him. In all the flying blades and groaning death, order was still present somewhere. Order and ties that transcended anything that could be thrown at them.

Tristan stayed down. In a way. He did go back to wolf and lunge at any Saxons that were stupid enough to get within range, but he stayed with them, and together, they fought.

* * *

In the end, Guinevere discovered that she couldn’t quite bear to watch. The Saxon’s sword came down, her eyes helplessly fluttered shut—

\--and metal clanged metal instead of steel cleaving her flesh. When she opened her eyes, Lancelot and the Saxon had already exchanged several blows, their feet dancing back and forth over the same patch of blood-trammeled ground. Lancelot blocked with his left sword and slashed forward with his right, but at the last moment, the other man twisted out of the way and slammed an elbow into Lancelot’s side. That rattled him, sending him reeling to the side, but when the Saxon’s sword came overhand at him, he recovered enough to slash through the bastard’s furs and draw blood.

He was defending her for Arthur, of course. Guinevere didn’t know exactly what Arthur felt for her, but she knew it’d been enough to make him listen to Merlin in the forest, to make him take up the fight of her people. And if she was honest with herself, she’d admit that she was hoping whatever it was would grow into…some kind of love. Something fierce and faithful and unfading like what she could see between Arthur and Lancelot.

Arthur had been her model enemy. Merlin had seen to that, and had seen that she’d learned every strength and weakness Arthur had. So it hadn’t been too surprising to discover that she’d learned to admire him, and then, when she had spoken with and watched him, to linger near him. He was what Britain needed—him as he was, as conflicted and proud and raging as the land itself. If he was broken like Merlin wanted, then everything was lost even if the battle was won.

And that was why Guinevere bit her tongue till her nerves leaped into full awareness, and why she leaped at the Saxon, stabbing down with her dagger. The point was turned aside by his shoulder-guard, but she managed to distract him long enough for Lancelot to regain his balance. By the time the Saxon had thrown her off, Lancelot was too close to avoid. German blood splattered into Guinevere’s mouth from the deep slash in the man’s side—not fatal, but serious enough.

She hit the ground as a wolf and rolled, a little jarred but not nearly as badly as it would’ve been if she’d been human. A moment to get back on her feet, but that was long enough for the Saxon to ram his sword-hilt into Lancelot’s temple. The knight dropped, dazed and near fainting, while the Saxon lurched away, holding his side.

Guinevere started forward, but one of the other Saxons mustered up enough courage to rush her and she had to deal with him. A slashed throat later, she was shifting into human form and scooping up a dagger from the ground. Lancelot was slowly climbing to his feet, still shaking his head—and the Saxon had a crossbow.

The girl was frozen and too slow, but the wolf was smashing into Lancelot’s knees. Guinevere cut herself on his sword, but it was a minor wound and she could still move. Lancelot was as well, cursing and throwing himself sideways as the Saxon hurriedly reloaded. His shoulder had an arrow sticking out of it, but he was snarling too much for it to be a fatal injury. At least for the moment.

Her slashed side burned, but Guinevere gritted her teeth and threw her dagger, knocking the crossbow aside again. Then Lancelot was up enough to fling his sword into the Saxon’s heart. Both men fell, German to twitch and gurgle his life away and Sarmatian to twist into a limping black wolf. Guinevere switched back as well since it was easier to handle a wounded side that way. She leaped over Lancelot and brought down another Saxon, sinking her teeth into the soft neck flesh until she hit the spine.

A muzzle shoved hers aside and into an oncoming attacker, tripping the Saxon right into Lancelot’s jaws. His eyes snapped a mocking challenge at her, and irked, she rose to it. They circled around each other, guarding the other’s weaker side while they also competed for kills. Guinevere’s vision wavered from time to time, and the blood loss started to make her unsteady, but she kept up with Lancelot.

His shoulder was matted with blood from the arrow still in it, fur a red mess all the way down his leg, but he persisted in fighting. Fortunately, the Saxons were clearly losing heart, unfamiliar with this kind of enemy. The whites of their eyes shone with confused terror, which brought a warm sweet wave of satisfaction over Guinevere’s tongue.

Then the crowds thinned. Parted. And there was Arthur and the Saxon leader, both bleeding profusely, faces drawn and deathly pale with exhaustion. They were holding back, prelude to another rush. Guinevere found herself shaking into human form, not because she’d intended to but because she was too drained and too fearful to stay as a wolf. Beside her, Lancelot was doing the same thing. He was white as the dead, swaying on his feet with one arm hanging uselessly at his side, but he still yanked a sword from the nearest corpse and began to move toward the pair in front.

But before he could take more than one step, a Saxon blundered in the way. Lancelot dodged and chopped his opponent into death, but the effort clearly cost him. He went to his knees, grabbing at his injured shoulder, and like Guinevere could only watch.

Arthur swung his sword and went low, but the Saxon met his blow and forced it away, then pivoted to slash at Arthur’s back. The thrust was overextended and so didn’t kill Arthur outright, but it did send him to his knees, pain-hazed eyes staring straight at Guinevere and Lancelot.

Behind him, the Saxon raised his sword.

Lancelot screamed. Guinevere couldn’t understand what he was shouting because she’d suddenly run out of air.

And Arthur’s eyes closed as he blindly stabbed behind him. The sword above his head trembled—then fell backwards as the Saxon choked up thick black-flecked blood and died. Arthur held onto his sword long enough to pull it from the Saxon’s body, then dropped it and fell forward onto his elbows, gasping as if he’d never breathed before.

Where she found the energy, Guinevere didn’t know, but somehow she was over the intervening space and pressing her face into one side of Arthur’s neck, taking deep whiffs of the sweat, blood, death and _life_ that saturated his skin. She slumped against him, each of them mutually propping the other up.

“Well. Looks like the battle’s over.” Lancelot was there—he’d gotten to Arthur first and had his head on Arthur’s shoulder. The arrow forced him to twist away from Guinevere, but she could still hear the shaking in his voice. His hand groped against her hip, then found Arthur’s hand and knotted their fingers together. “What I do to you…more like what you do to me. Arthur—you almost—Arthur—Arthur—”

“I’m here. We’re here.” Arthur carefully lifted his other hand and roughly stroked Lancelot’s bent head, then drifted his fingers to the arrow shaft. “This needs to come out. We—we need to get off this field.”

Someone coughed, and Guinevere looked up to see the other knights dragging themselves towards the three of them. The scout—Tristan?—was being carried between two others; he looked near to dying, but when he raised his head, she saw that his eyes were still too bright for that.

They were all more hurt than she was. The thought stung at Guinevere, goading her into standing. Her head rippled in blackness for a moment, but it passed and she was still on her feet, still in command of her people, who were slowly gathering around her and the knights. “You’ve won Britain. All of you. Now let her heal you.”


	7. Epilogue: Hearth

The boy impatiently bounced on the bed, brushing away his mother’s attempts to tuck him into the sheets. “But what happened afterward? Did they live?”

“Yes, they lived. Five knights, one king and one queen.” A fond smile on her face, she patted his crisp curls. Then she turned to glare at the indignant cough in the corner. “Fine. Four knights, one king, one queen and an annoying—”

“You could at least be nice about me to my own get,” the man said as he sauntered up to the bed. “Takes two to bear a pup, after all.”

Blinking, the boy looked his confusion from one adult to another. “Pup?”

“Yes, pup. Hopefully like me, since your mother’s a bit scrawny when she’s on four legs.” The man ruffled his son’s hair, then leaned past him to peck a kiss on the forehead of the other boy, who was politely silent but full to bursting with curiosity. “No fear about you—you already look more like Arthur than Arthur himself. Big-boned and always caught up in your thoughts, but nasty in a fight. I hear you beat Bors’ number seven the other day.”

An exasperated elbow thudded into the man’s ribs, making him hastily withdraw. He winked at the boys as he slid out the door, then stopped in the hall and waited for the woman to finish settling the children. When she came out, he snagged her waist and spun her around the hallway until she was laughing too hard to remember she was supposed to be put out with him. “Lancelot, you’re a hopeless loss and you’re going to ruin the children. I honestly don’t know why I put up with you.”

“Because I make you moan like a—” He allowed himself to be silenced by her mouth, then pulled back to kiss her forehead. They slowed as the somber darkness of the corridor overtook them. “Because you had to. I notice you never tell them about how long before we sorted things out. And why Gawain has a few more scars than he should. I think Tristan and Galahad are still a little mad about that.”

“I’m never going to forgive those northern fools for turning against all of us like that. They swore allegiance to Arthur, and then—” She buried her face in his shoulder, sighing. “I will tell them, when they’re older. When they can understand that life never stops being difficult, but that that’s no reason to give up on it entirely.”

A third man strode out of the dark, tired eyes lighting up when he saw the two of them. “Possibly the hardest lesson to learn. I don’t think I’ve quite understand all of it myself yet.”

“Well, maybe we should remind you,” Lancelot purred. Laughing softly so as not to wake the children, he and Guinevere backed Arthur into their own bedroom.


	8. Missing Scene: Hunt Day

The deer knew something was wrong, but not what. They uneasily shifted, pacing back and forth over the mass of broken twigs that covered the ground. Upwind of them, a huge tree had fallen a bare year ago, and in the damp climate was already well on its way into pungent rot.

Gawain crouched lower to the ground and edged his way through the brush, careful not to catch himself on any branches. Despite its impenetrable appearance, the under-foliage in Britain did have enough room for close maneuvers. It just took a good deal of practice and embarrassing mistakes to learn the way of it.

He raised his muzzle and delicately sniffed the air, testing the change in the concentration of fear-scent. It’d jumped in the past five seconds, and now it was jumping again, ricocheting through his nose to coil tense energy into his muscles. They were going to run any moment now, and he’d have to be—

\--brown blurred against the grayish trunks, snapping white teeth foremost as Galahad sprung for the laggard one at the back of the herd, which they’d all silently agreed upon a few moments before. Too early—the remaining particles of humanity snarled swears—but nothing to be done except lunge out and try to head off the fleeing deer.

_Flank attack_ , some random bit of rationality mentioned, but Gawain was so busy with the breaking twigs glancing off of him and the fast ripping of uneven dirt beneath his feet that he barely heard. A doe twisted away from him, quick on her feet but at the expense of leaving her neck open for attack. He didn’t have to think about leaping because he already was, riding the wind, and then he was crashing into struggling flesh with a mouth overfilling with gushing hot blood. Air angrily whistled past his ear as a hoof struck out, and a blow from another smacked off his ribs, but he could already feel the rate of the flowing blood slacken and he held on. Drank noisily to keep from gagging, and then to revel in the dark rich freshness of a rare treat. The doe went into spasms as he chewed her throat ragged, but soon she was stilling and going limp with defeat. Gawain could feel his lips draw back in a pleased grin as he stepped back to lick at his fur and study his prize.

To his left, the flurry of motion that’d been Galahad finally ceased. Settling dust revealed a panting wolf that slightly favored his left foreleg, but from the looks of it, he’d been nothing more than bruised. In a few days he’d be fine. That was a pity, because Galahad never seemed to understand something until someone had shoved his nose into the concrete consequences, and so he’d never bothered to learn how to make a really clean kill. Though he’d done well enough so that Gawain, happily gnawing off the first few chunks of his doe, didn’t feel like pushing the issue.

A sudden crackle sent both their heads pricking up, but the message of the breeze relaxed them. Galahad whuffed, trying futilely to blow the sticky red stains off his face. He nosed at his deer a few times before seizing it by the mashed spot on the neck and dragging it over to Gawain. Then he settled down on his side and flopped his head on the ground, watching with narrowed, determinedly unimpressed eyes as Tristan and Lancelot emerged from the woods, dragging between them a huge buck.

Twelve point antlers. Gawain felt his feralness recede a little as he tried to raise his eyebrows and mostly failed, given that wolves didn’t have face muscles that were as facile as humans’. He attempted to shrug, didn’t manage that either, and finally ended up stretching out to slurp at the blood matting down Tristan’s cheek fur. Of course, at first Tristan stiffened and blinked and generally acted like a moron, so Gawain simply knocked him over and twisted over the top of him in order to resume cleaning.

Galahad rolled his eyes and ripped a huge gash in the belly of his doe, then shoved in his head. His loss, then. Gawain had already gorged himself, and so he was perfectly content to lie around and nuzzle Tristan into bonelessness. He did give Tristan a chance to feed himself, but as soon as the eating was done, he pounced again so as to prevent any escape. It was a nice day, it was the other knights’ turns to be on look-out, and they were going to enjoy themselves if it was the last thing Gawain ever did.

Speaking of, the thud of boots should’ve caught their attention but didn’t, because Arthur naturally was walking up from the downwind direction so they could smell him coming. Lancelot gobbled down a last bit of liver before roughly wiping off his face on the buck’s hide and standing to meet Arthur. His tail was wagging—one of the drawbacks of wolf-form was a complete inability to hide emotions. Rumbling an amused sound, Gawain rolled off Tristan and chivvied Galahad out of the deer belly before he ate himself sick again.

“Good hunt,” Arthur said in an approving tone when he finally arrived. He absently ruffled Lancelot’s ears as he measured the span of the buck’s rack with his hands. Annoyed, Lancelot butted his thigh. “What?”

They all looked at him. Tristan glanced about the surrounding woods, then pointedly stretched out and closed his eyes. No one around, and they’d known about Arthur and everything for ages.

Of course, Arthur hesitated another moment—he always did—but then Lancelot smeared blood over the back of his hand and licked it off. The next second, a prime sable-furred wolf loomed over the leaner black one, which playfully tumbled over and offered up his belly. With an air of faint amusement, Arthur prodded it and got an indignant growl. He easily sidestepped Lancelot’s snap and headed for the nearest carcass.

It didn’t take him long to finish, given that Lancelot kept fidgeting around him, and soon Arthur was bedded down with the rest of them, chin lightly resting on Lancelot’s back as he soaked up the sunlight.


	9. Missing Scene: Guardianship

Those hands of Bors could mash men’s skulls even without having that weighty kukri in them, and yet when he held his daughter’s hands and helped her take her first steps, he did so with all the delicacy of a glassblower working his frail white-hot magic. The incongruity of their lives never ceased to amaze Arthur.

Leaning beside him, Dagonet wore a faint close-lipped smile that grew teeth only when the girl toddled right into his massive knee. It was a far cry from his wolf-smile, which took even Lancelot aback. 

Kind and gentle, Dagonet leaned over and murmured some nonsense to her that adults would never hear, then turned her about and sent her back to Bors, who was squatting and cooing from a few feet away. In the doorway across the alley, Vanora could be seen bustling about the makings of a fine dinner. Another baby was bundled into the crook of her arm, and a few more gamboled underfoot.

“I’m surprised he asked me to stand for…” Arthur couldn’t remember getting a name. Embarrassed, he vaguely waved at the girl, who was now lording it over her cringing father. “I thought he would’ve asked you, since you watch over Vanora when he’s in the field.”

“You got the surgeon for Vanora. She would’ve had a far worse time if you hadn’t.” Dagonet’s smile had shrunk again, but traces of it were still clearly present. “Besides, I already stand for all the others.”

As he tried and failed to get an accurate count of the various children running about, Arthur felt his appreciation for Dagonet’s stolidity go up several notches. “Quite the task.”

Nodding, Dagonet folded his arms over his chest and retreated into silence once more. That had always been his way for as long as Arthur had known him, though in the beginning he had volunteered a little information. It was basically the same story as all the rest: accidental changing around twelve, thrown out by his family and consequently left to learn survival on his own till he’d wandered near enough to the Roman outpost for Arthur to find him. Dagonet had dropped a few cryptic hints that suggested some of his family had tried to help him and had been punished for it, but more knights had always been coming in and needed training or aid, and Arthur had never quite got around to following up on Dagonet’s story. By then, the man had formed such a strong friendship with Bors that Arthur had felt relatively safe in leaving those two to watch each other’s backs.

By then, Lancelot had shown up and consequently managed to eat up a good deal of Arthur’s time. That brat and his ability to upset Arthur’s life not only astounded but frustrated and infuriated and…well, somehow wormed deep inside and made itself indispensable.

“It’s not your custom, is it? I don’t ever remember coming across something like the Roman tradition of in loco parentis when we were in Sarmatia.” Arthur was speaking in an awkward, artificial tone. He knew he was, he knew it was because he was caught between several uncomfortable feelings at once, and he knew it was coming out on Dagonet. Hopefully, the other man would forgive him. It was difficult to tell because Dagonet was, if anything, even less readable than Tristan. At least with Tristan, Arthur could always try the oblique approach through Gawain and Galahad. The only possible indirect route to Dagonet was Bors, and Bors was less than observant when it came to subtlety, so it was impossible to pump him for information.

Dagonet, however, was answering in a calm, level voice that did much to reassure Arthur. “No. There’s nothing really like it. But we’re not really like other Sarmatians.” He shrugged. “It’s a good idea.”

“Yes, it is. Rome’s lasted a long time through such ideas.” Arthur pushed away from the wall and clapped Bors on the shoulder. “A fine girl. When she’s grown, you’ll have trouble keeping the men away from her skirts.”

“As long as Lancelot stays away, I think I can handle any young snots that come this way.” Grinning so every chip and gap in his teeth showed, Bors lifted his daughter and returned the gesture. “You’ll not stay for dinner?”

The smells wafting from Vanora’s kitchen were tempting, but Lancelot was expecting him in the stables. A tinge regretful, Arthur shook his head. “No, but thank you. Enjoy yourselves.”

“We do. You should as well.” Dagonet solemnly inclined his head and stepped inside, leaving a puzzled Bors to shrug.

“It’s just him,” Bors said, faintly apologetic.

Arthur waved away the excuses. “It’s all right. We’ve known each other too long for me to need any explanations.”

Known each other long enough to know when things needed to be said and when things didn’t, Arthur thought as he walked off. He could press Dagonet, and the man would most likely tell him what his curiosity wanted to know—but was that necessary?

Not when Arthur had made a point about not judging by past actions, but by present ones. He already knew everything he needed to about Dagonet.

Lancelot was waiting at the stable doors, restless as always. No matter how deeply Arthur dove into the other man, he never seemed to know enough. The hunger for more gnawed at him sometimes, like now when he’d just come from the contentment of Bors’ bountiful family.

But then Lancelot saw him and turned, grin white in the falling dark, and Arthur forgot what he’d been thinking on.


End file.
